A New Theologian, M. Fernand Laudet

A New Theologian, M. Fernand Laudet

The Bulletin of the Catholic Professors of the University (Bulletin des professeurs catholiques de l’Université), monthly publication, first year, subscription six francs per year, Joseph Lotte, professor at the Lycée, 1, rue Daniel, Coutances, Manche, in its number 7, of July 20, 1911, published the following communiqué. We reproduce it integrally. We change only the numbers of the paragraphs, in order to make them fit into our general accounting. We have restored a few paragraphs and fragments of paragraphs suppressed from the Bulletin at the last moment in order to obey the necessities of layout.

Coutances, Thursday July 20, 1911.

The few Catholics gone astray at the Revue hebdomadaire read with stupor the article that M. Fernand Laudet, the director of this review, published, in his number 24, of June 17, 1911, against the essential truths of our faith.

This article is signed François le Grix. It has been impossible for us at Coutances to know whether this name, totally unknown in French letters, is a pseudonym of M. Laudet or whether it might not be some accomplice who would exist in reality in the offices of this Revue. In doubt we shall continue to name him M. le Grix.

The article is directed apparently against the Mystère de la Charité de Jeanne d’Arc. It aims in reality at the firmest propositions of our theology.

It will be Péguy’s honor that one will never be able to undertake to ruin his mystery without thereby condemning oneself to undertake to ruin, in his work, the very foundations of our faith. M. Laudet, or M. le Grix, will be a new example of it for us. We would not have retained this example if it were not this time a question of a review which has been claiming for some

years to make itself a clientele in the Catholic world.

It is well enough known that in the very terms M. Péguy does not employ an expression that is not taken in the most rigorously and so to speak the most technically theological sense. One could not say as much of M. Laudet. The incredible inexperience of his language as soon as it is a question of the truths of the faith often renders unwieldy to grasp the heresies with which his article is stuffed. They are only the more dangerous for it and we shall try to put them into French.

§ 86. — “after the blasphemous rationalism of Thalamas, writes M. Laudet, after the pious and lay exegeses of Anatole France” … — Thus for M. Laudet the Vie de Jeanne d’Arc of M. Anatole France is a pious and lay exegesis.

That the work, or rather the book, or rather the two volumes of M. Anatole France are the work of a layman, no one contests. M. Anatole France has never put forth the pretension of being a cleric. What on top of that is a lay exegesis, M. Laudet might perhaps be hard put to explain to us. One had believed up until then that there was only one exegesis, and that it was, or that it claimed to be scientific. And above all what is a lay exegesis. And finally what is an exegesis. One generally names exegesis the establishment and the interpretation of a sacred text. Particularly of an antique sacred text. Neither texts in the form of procès-verbaux and notarial acts of two ecclesiastical trials of the beginning or

rather of the first third and of the middle of the fifteenth century are sacred texts, nor are they antique texts. The establishment, the reading and the edition of these texts does not properly constitute an exegesis. Finally, dear M. Laudet, it is not M. Anatole France who has given us the texts of the Procès. Michelet had read them and Quicherat made of them straight off an edition that one may call eternal. All that one can reproach him with, when one works on it, is perhaps that his analytic table of contents is not complete.

But let us not quarrel with M. Laudet over faults of French. The propriety of terms is evidently not his strong point. Not only does he find that M. Anatole France has done an exegesis. But he finds that he has done a pious exegesis. We have often said that the most violent attacks, the most brutal persecutions against our faith were infinitely less dangerous than the attempts at sugary insinuation. Or rather the violent attacks, the brutal persecutions are not dangerous for our faith. They do nothing but ruin it. Only the insinuations, the attempts at sugary penetration can corrupt it. In this particular case we have always thought that the diatribes of M. Thalamas were infinitely less dangerous for the cult that we render to Joan of Arc and at bottom infinitely less impious than the cautious insinuations of M. Anatole France. And the cautious insinuations of M. Anatole France themselves, when they were presented to us brutally by the combistes, were not

dangerous. They can be infinitely so when they are presented to us hypocritically as pieties by a man like M. Laudet, in a Revue like the Revue hebdomadaire. But it is not only here a question of quantity, a question of degree. It is a question of faith.

M. Anatole France is an atheist. We take this word here without any ulterior motive, without any intention of insult. We take it only in its proper and so to speak technical and metaphysical sense. The book of M. Anatole France is the book of an atheist. The Joan of Arc of M. Anatole France is anything one wishes, except a saint and a Christian. And not only the Joan of Arc, but the whole world that in the book of M. Anatole France surrounds this great saint is anything one wishes, except a Christian world.

M. Anatole France is an atheist and profoundly un-Christian. He has made an atheist book and one profoundly un-Christian. Nothing to say to that. At least he is consistent with himself. But that next a man like M. Laudet, a Revue like the Revue hebdomadaire should endorse so to speak this attitude of M. Anatole France and try to make his Catholic and generally Christian clientele believe that atheism and impiety constitute a pious exegesis, there is the attempt at diversion of the faithful consciences that we shall surveil henceforth. One would try in vain to excuse such an abuse of words by the incapacity to write or by an excess of literary flattery. All this surpasses infinitely literary criticism and even political and literary flattery. There is here a plan that we shall not tire of

denouncing. This plan bursts out in the other propositions of M. Laudet.

§ 87. — “Péguy comes to this of restoring to us, he says, … the Joan of Arc of our popular Histoire de France, the Joan of Arc of ‘when we were little,’ the supernatural Joan of Arc, finally Saint Joan of Arc.” “Let it above all be well understood that this is not here a historical undertaking. Péguy does not recount Joan of Arc. He has not surrounded himself with documents. Has he even read the histories, the pieces of the trial? I know nothing of it. He represents her; he reanimates her, present in the midst of us a second time. The legend suffices for him; he does not criticize it: he looks at it with clear French eyes, and also this living imprint, this luminous furrow that Joan of Arc traced and which is still read upon the whole country of France.”

Let us leave aside this imbecile metaphor at the end, this luminous furrow that wishes to raise itself to the grand style. Let us put back into form the central proposition. We say that this central proposition is the most injurious thing there is for the essential principles of our faith. Let us leave aside the bad faith with which M. Laudet attacks the work of M. Péguy. If M. Péguy consents to turn aside a few weeks from writing the second Mystery of Joan of Arc, he may perhaps engage with M. Laudet in an interesting conversation. The central proposition of M. Laudet is the following:

A. — There is history and there is legend,

B. — To restore: the Joan of Arc of our popular Histoire de France; the Joan of Arc of “when we were little”; the supernatural Joan of Arc; finally Saint Joan of Arc;

that is not a historical undertaking; the legend suffices,

in other words:

C. — There is history and there is legend. The legend comprises:

the Joan of Arc of our popular Histoire de France; the Joan of Arc of “when we were little”; the supernatural Joan of Arc; finally Saint Joan of Arc.

History comprises the rest.

§ 88. — This central proposition of M. Laudet comprises one might almost say a gross historical heresy, and one must certainly say the gravest and most injurious heresy in matters of faith.

D. — Historical heresy. — M. Laudet withdraws from history and puts into legend the Joan of Arc of our popular Histoire de France. Now M. Laudet will permit us to say it to him, there is only one Joan of Arc in the world who is historical, and it is the Joan of Arc of our popular Histoire de France. And there is only one Joan of Arc, or rather if I may say one category of Joans of Arc in the world that are legendary, and they

are precisely those that were born in the imaginations of the Intellectual Party, notably in the poor imagination of M. Fernand Laudet. No Joan of Arc is historical, no Joan of Arc is in the tissue of the reality of history but a Joan of Arc profoundly and eternally of the people. Unless M. Laudet believes that those admirable histories, the lifting of the siege of Orléans, the consecration at Reims, the campaign of France are not events for the popular Histoire de France.

E. — Infinitely more grave is the heresy in matter of faith. For M. Laudet the supernatural Joan of Arc, finally Saint Joan of Arc are not history and are legend. For us Christians, let us say it loudly, the supernatural and sanctity, it is this that is history, the only history perhaps that interests us, the only profound and profoundly real history and we would grant rather that it is all the rest that would be legend. This central heresy of M. Laudet and of the Revue hebdomadaire that the supernatural and the saintly would not be history and would be legend, (notably the supernatural and the saintly of the history of Joan of Arc), this central heresy is so monstrous that one can say that it is historically the most grave and that it commands and encloses historically all the others. Of these others, which are innumerable, for error is multiple, we shall find a few scattered, (but one quite particularly and as it were eminently scandalous), in the article of M. Laudet.

§ 89. — … the Joan of Arc of “when we were little”… M. Laudet seems to believe that the Joan of Arc of “when we were little” was particularly contemptible. It would first be necessary to know whether M. Laudet has become big. M. Laudet does not seem to suspect for a single instant that we must understand in its most rigorous and most literal sense this word of Jesus, like all the words of Jesus: “And he said: ‘Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as these little ones, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’” Matthew, XVIII, 3: Et dixit: Amen dico vobis, nisi conversi fueritis, et efficiamini sicut parvuli, non intrabitis in regnum cœlorum. His disciples had just asked him: “Who, thinkest thou, is (the) greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Matthew, XVIII, 1, et s: In illa hora accesserunt discipuli ad Jesum dicentes: Quis, putas, major est in regno cœlorum?

Et advocans Jesus parvulum, statuit eum in medio eorum.

At that hour the disciples drew near to Jesus, saying: “Who, thinkest thou, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

And Jesus calling a child set him in the midst of them.

M. Laudet will therefore do well not to despise too much the Joan of Arc of “when we were little.” Nor perhaps the Jesus Christ of “when we were little.”

§ 90. — … the supernatural Joan of Arc, finally Saint

Joan of Arc. — If the supernatural Joan of Arc and Saint Joan of Arc are legend and are not history, M. Laudet, the communion of saints, the mystical linkage of the saints with one another and with Jesus the first of saints is also legend and is not history. And the life itself of Jesus, the Annunciation, the Incarnation, the Nativity, the obscure life, the preaching, the Passion, the Death, the Resurrection, the whole life of Saint Jesus, that too, M. Laudet, is of the supernatural and of sanctity. It is even the same supernatural and the same sanctity. Then the Annunciation, the Incarnation, the Nativity, the obscure life and the public life, the preaching, the Passion, the Death, the Resurrection, and the Judgment, all this life of saint, it too is legend and is not history. M. Laudet, that is perhaps also a Jesus for little children, a Jesus for our popular history of Christendom.

§ 91. — Let us leave aside this extraordinary proposition of literary history and literary criticism that he who recounts would make history and would make only history and that he who represents would make legend and would make only legend. M. Péguy will perhaps give himself the leisure of expounding to M. Laudet some of the most generally known principles of literary criticism and history. — “He has not surrounded himself with documents, says M. Laudet. Has he even read the histories, the pieces of the trial? I know nothing of it.” — M. Laudet could know it. Evidently Péguy has not surrounded himself with documents. But he has twenty times indicated from what sources he had drawn not only

generally the matter, but the form itself and the interior regulation of his mysteries. We all know that Péguy’s sources are the following, and in this order:

First the catechism (that of the little children, M. Laudet); in the catechism the sacraments;

Second the Mass and Vespers; salutation; the offices; the liturgy;

Third the Gospels;

Fourth the Procès;

Fifth only and at the last plane a historical knowledge of French Christendom in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries;

Plunging naturally into sixth a more general knowledge of French Christianity and of Christianity in general. Or, to speak exactly, of French Christendom and of Christendom in general.

But for M. Laudet neither the catechism and the sacraments; nor the offices and the liturgy; nor the Gospels nor theology are evidently documents. With which one surrounds oneself.

§ 92. — M. Péguy has often specified that of the three catechisms that he had received the one that had been his deepest source, (and not only perhaps for his Mysteries of Joan of Arc), was the first

of the three, the one he had received the youngest, the catechism of his native parish, which was the parish of Saint-Aignan of Orléans. As the name would suffice to indicate, it was a very old provincial parish, full of poor and often miserable families. The catechism was full of poor and often miserable children. M. Laudet would certainly prefer a catechism for rich children; a religion for “grown-ups”; a parish of “enlightened bourgeois.” He cannot forgive M. Péguy this people’s Christianity, directly come out of the people. He would prefer a more elegant Christianity. Distinguished.

§ 93. — M. Laudet is evidently a partisan of a “reasonable” religion. — “The legend suffices for him, he says; he does not criticize it; he looks at it with clear French eyes”… — Let us leave aside this man who does not criticize and at the same time who looks with clear French eyes. It might not always be easy to reconcile one metaphor of M. Laudet with another metaphor of M. Laudet. Thus for M. Laudet we Christians, we lack criticism. We do not criticize what M. Laudet names legends. Now we claim on the contrary, M. Laudet, that it is the Intellectual Party that lacks criticism, and that it is we Christians who in reality criticize, who by criticism itself attain the deepest reality.

§ 94. — “To neglect history, says M. Laudet, and

prefer the legend to it, in order to restore to us more surely the true Joan of Arc!…” — It is the same proposition we seized above.

§ 95. — … “The accused, the controverted, says M. Laudet, the disputed, is precisely all of Joan of Arc, at least all of her that we are permitted to know, because it is the whole missionary and the whole martyr; and Joan belongs to us only as missionary and martyr, just as, M. Laudet still says, just as Christ only belongs to us from the day on which it pleased him to come out of his long years of thick shadow.” — In other words M. Laudet, new doctor, forbids us, — (and in what tone), — to contemplate, to propose to imitate the virtues of the saints in all the periods of the saints’ lives that were not periods of public life. To forbid us to contemplate the Virtues of Joan of Arc, the Faith, the Charity, soon the Hope of Joan of Arc, to forbid us to assist at the great Procession. There was a great procession. At the head the three Theological

Virtues marched. To forbid us to contemplate the Virtues of Joan of Arc up to the moment when she left her father’s house, M. Laudet, our new doctor, forbids us to contemplate the Virtues of Jesus up to the moment when he left his father’s house. Behold what our new doctor makes of the Imitation of Jesus Christ.

This proposition, — what am I saying, a proposition, — M. the doctor does not content himself with propositions, —

this commandment, this superb prohibition is so grossly heretical, it is so monstrous that reading it one doubts at first, one is suffocated. One must surmount this suffocation. Or rather one must keep it for a better occasion. This better occasion will not be long in coming. M. the doctor will see to it. Evidently one is suffocated by this extraordinary assurance. One must surmount this suffocation. One must examine this proposition, this commandment, this prohibition in detail. Joan, says M. Laudet, belongs to us only as missionary and martyr. We shall come back to this point in what it has of the particular for the life of Joan of Arc. But generally first, and as concerns all the saints, M. Laudet forms about the life of the saints, about the communion of saints, about the virtues of the saints extraordinary ideas. He seems to ignore that thousands and thousands, that hundreds of thousands of saints, that innumerable saints have won heaven, have made their salvation with eyes fixed on the obscure life of the other saints, and in them and through them upon this obscure life and directly upon the obscure life of Jesus. But we ourselves let us not lose breath. Let the injunctions of this great doctor not cut off our breath. We ourselves specify:

We shall examine hereafter what in the propositions of M. Laudet is particular to Joan of Arc. Let us retain first what in these propositions is general, what reaches Jesus and all the other saints.

F. — First in order to forbid us to consider

the Virtues of Joan of Arc up to the moment when she left her father’s house, M. Laudet forbids us to consider the Virtues of the saints who had no public life. What then will become, in the system of M. Laudet, in the theology of M. Laudet, of the lives, the sufferings, the trials, the exercises, the labors, the Virtues, the graces, the merits, the prayers of those innumerable saints, of the innumerable obscure saints. M. Laudet retrenches them purely and simply. When one takes some heresy, one cannot take too much of it. M. Laudet excludes, retrenches from the communion of saints and from the reversibility of sufferings, of trials, of exercises, of labors, of Virtues, of graces, of merits, of prayers these innumerable sufferings, these innumerable trials, these innumerable exercises, these innumerable labors, these innumerable Virtues, these innumerable graces, these innumerable merits, these innumerable prayers. He literally depopulates the communion of saints and the reversibility of graces. And one can even say that he depopulates them of their most numerous people. For it is evident that there are infinitely more obscure saints than public saints. We know on all sides that there have been and that there are innumerable secret saints. But we shall come back to this point. It suffices first that M. Laudet denies the communion of saints and the reversibility of graces in the by far most extensive parts of the geography of sanctity. We shall soon return to the depth itself and to what one might name the geology of sanctity. We are here speaking, speaking of sanctity,

only of its local, geographical extension. We know with certainty that a very great number of saints had no public life and that the Glory of heaven is the first they touched.

G. — Second in order to forbid us to consider the Virtues of Joan of Arc up to the moment when she left her father’s house, M. Laudet forbids us to consider the Virtues of the other saints in the periods of their lives that were not periods of public life. Thus, and to keep still to the geographical extension of sanctity, not only does M. Laudet retrench from the communion of saints and from the reversibility of graces innumerable saints, but for the few saints he keeps, for the public saints, of the public saints M. Laudet retrenches further the whole period of their life that was not public. Not only does M. Laudet depopulate the communion of saints and the reversibility of graces of its by far most numerous contingent geographically, of its most numerous people, but for the little contingent he keeps, for the little people he keeps, he still further depopulates the communion of saints and the reversibility of graces of a good part, of a great part of the life of these saints, of all the non-public part.

Second, M. Laudet denies, excludes, retrenches from the communion of saints and from the reversibility of graces, of sufferings, of trials, of exercises, of labors, of Virtues, of merits, of prayers all the sanctities, all the graces, all the sufferings,

all the trials, all the exercises, all the labors, all the Virtues, all the merits, all the prayers of the public saints in all the private periods, in all the obscure periods, in all the non-public periods of their life.

§ 96. — In sum, and to keep to the as it were geographical extension of sanctity, M. Laudet denies the communion of saints, the participation, the common participation, he denies all reversibilities, he denies all the glorious (and so often obscure) apparatus of sanctity

first in all the non-public lives, in all the non-public periods of the non-public saints;

second in all the non-public lives, in all the non-public periods of the public saints.

§ 97. — In the limit case, in the eminent case, in the first case, in the supreme case he was fatally led to retrench from the life of Jesus all the private life, all the obscure life, all the non-public life of Jesus. For once he speaks French and tells us so expressly: just as, he tells us, just as Christ belongs to us only after the day on which it pleased him to come out of his long years of thick shadow. Let us enumerate a little, let us count out these long years of thick shadow.

These long years of thick shadow, M. Laudet, comprise: (and even so we certainly do not exhaust them): (far from it):

the Visitation; the Annunciation;

the Incarnation; the Nativity; the Circumcision; the Purification of the Virgin;

Jesus seated among the doctors;

finally and as a whole all the first thirty years of the life of Jesus, Jesus working at his father’s, the private life, the obscure life, the non-public life of Jesus.

Simply. That is all that, in the system of M. Laudet, in the theology of M. Laudet, that is all of the life of Jesus that does not belong to us. That is all that falls away from the life of Jesus. That is all that in the theology of M. Laudet we have not the right to seize in the life of Jesus. So that M. Laudet retrenches from the Christian calendar, and even from the Almanach des Postes et Télégraphes, such as the postman of the Republic gave it to us for our New Year’s gifts in the department of la Manche, at least the following feasts, (I am naturally following the calendar of 1911): (and certainly I do not exhaust them all): (I mean to say that certainly I do not exhaust their list): (far from it):

First of January the Circumcision; 6 January the Epiphany; 2 February the Purification; 25 March the Annunciation; 24 June the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist; 2 July the Visitation of the Virgin;

perhaps 15 August the Assumption, for the assumption of the virgin does not appear to have been surrounded, as M. Laudet says, with great publicity; 8 September the Nativity of the Virgin; 21 November the Presentation of the Virgin; Sunday 3 December, first Sunday of Advent, beginning of Advent; in December all of Advent, notably the four Sundays of Advent; 8 December the Immaculate Conception;

finally 25 December the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Christmas, which is nearly half of the Catholic liturgy, Easter being the other pole. M. Laudet has a liturgy that excludes, that retrenches Christmas. M. Laudet’s liturgy is no less extraordinary than his theology.

§ 98. — Thus third, in the limit, and it was his fatal point of arrival, M. Laudet denies of the life of Jesus all that precedes his entry into public. He excludes, he retrenches from the communion of saints and from all reversibilities, the graces, the merits, the Virtues, the exercises, the work, the sufferings, the prayers, all the life of Jesus up to the beginning of his thirtieth year. Up to the moment when he left his father’s house. In the theology of M. Laudet the examples of Jesus, the models of Jesus, exemplaria, do not belong to us up to the beginning of his thirtieth year. In the theology of M. Laudet the prayers he addressed to his Father up to the beginning

of his thirtieth year do not count, do not enter into the communion of saints and into the reversibility of prayers; they are prayers that fall away, that are lost for us. In the system, in the theology of M. Laudet all the patience, at work, and at existence itself, all the work, all this life of work, of obedience and humility that Jesus offered to his Father up to the beginning of his thirtieth year does not enter into the communion of saints, is not a life of merits; it is a life that does not count, that does not enter into the reversibility of merits; they are labors, they are obediences and humilities that fall away, that are lost for us. That do not count. That do not belong to us.

§ 99. — We can thus, we can now measure the total negation, the total retrenchment that the theology of M. Laudet inflicts on the theology hitherto recognized. We can measure the total negation, the total retrenchment that the theology of M. Laudet effects in the communion of saints and in universal reversibility. M. Laudet retrenches from the communion of saints and from universal reversibility:

First all the lives of non-public saints;

Second all the non-public lives of public saints;

Third and in the eminent limit among the public saints all the non-public life of Jesus.

A particular but culminating consequence is

that every time the liturgy pronounces and that we pronounce these essential words, every time we pray to God by the merits of Jesus Christ, we understand this expression as is proper in its full, literal, total, universal sense, whereas M. Laudet on the contrary understands them in a conditional, partial, truncated sense.

§ 100. — By denying the communion of saints and reversibility in the parts we have said and ranged under three heads, by retrenching from the communion of saints and from reversibility the parts we have said and ranged under three heads, M. Laudet has denied in these three parts that essential face of communion which is or is the imitation, he has retrenched these three parts from this essential face of communion which is imitation. In the system, in the theology of M. Laudet and starting from the source, descending:

First the public saints must not imitate, for and in their non-public life, the non-public life of Jesus;

Second the non-public saints must not imitate, for and in all their life, for and in their entire life, neither first the non-public life of Jesus, nor second and in consequence and in imitation of imitation the non-public life of the public saints;

Third and finally and generally we Christians must not imitate and we sinners must not propose to ourselves at least to imitate first the non-public virtues and life of Jesus; second and in consequence and in imitation of imitation the non-public virtues and life of the public saints; third and in consequence and in conclusion and in imitation of imitation of imitation the virtues and the life entire of the non-public saints. Behold what M. Laudet has made of this expression by the merits of Jesus Christ which is as it were or rather which is the cardinal articulation of Christian prayer and of the mechanism of salvation. Behold what he does, behold what he is constrained to do of this Imitation of Jesus Christ and of the other saints, which is the very tissue of which Christian life is woven. He tells us so expressly and he is led to tell us so, he is constrained to tell us so: “Just as Christ belongs to us only after the day when it pleased him to come out of his long years of thick shadow.” We have just seen by what theological mechanism these long years of thick shadow, which according to doctor Laudet do not belong to us, are on the contrary an integral and very considerable part of communion and reversibility and form, on the contrary, the point of aim, the point of application, the surface of application of the by far greater law, multo majoris, of Christian imitation. We mean to say of by far the greatest in extension.

§ 101. — M. Laudet, who evidently works only in grandeurs, temporal grandeurs, and who moves only in public sumptuousnesses, seems indeed to ignore that to consider still only the as it were geographical extension of sanctity there have been and there are

thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of Christians, — of saints, — innumerable Christians, — innumerable saints, — who have won heaven with eyes fixed solely upon those long years of thick shadow which according to M. Laudet do not belong to us. Evidently these saints may appear unpresentable when one has the honor of being director of the Revue hebdomadaire. These obscure saints are saints of the little folk. But after all not everyone can be director of the Revue hebdomadaire. And shine in society. M. Laudet seems to ignore that thousands of Christians, that thousands of saints, that innumerable Christians, that innumerable saints have won heaven by obscure practice, by obscurely practicing the very imitated virtues, the obscure imitated virtues, the non-public imitated virtues:

first and going toward the source, going back to the source, first of all the virtues, of the entire virtues of the non-public saints;

second the non-public virtues of the non-public life, of the non-public period and also the non-public virtues of the public life, of the public period of the life of public saints;

third and notably and eminently among the public saints, the non-public virtues of the non-public life, of the non-public period of the life of Jesus and also the non-public virtues of the public life, of the public period of the life of Jesus.

§ 102. — For it is all the same too much to enter into the extraordinary system and theology of M. Laudet, into this theology which cuts the communion in two, which suppresses an important and considerable part of it, which abrades, which retrenches an important and considerable part of it, both of the communion itself and in it of reversibility, and together in it of imitation, it is too much to enter ourselves into this extraordinary theology, it is too much to give a hand ourselves to this system, to this discontinuous discontinuing theology to grant, to let stand this absolute separation between public life and private life, even of the saints,

first between public saints and private, non-public saints;

second in the life of the public saints between a defined public life and private life, posited as separated by a watertight partition, between a defined public period and private period, posited as separated by a watertight partition;

third in the public saints, among the public saints in the life of Jesus between a defined public life and private life, posited as separated by a watertight partition, between a defined public period and private period, posited as separated by a watertight partition. Even for the directors of reviews we know very well that private life does not cease entirely, is not entirely sealed off

during public life, on entry into public life, perhaps on the contrary. All the more so the saints. To consider only extension, we know very well that the private life of the saints, like that of other men, all the more so than other men, is not annulled, reduced to zero, does not cease entirely, is not entirely sealed off during their public life, on their entry into public life, perhaps on the contrary. And at the eminent limit we know very well that the private life of Jesus did not cease entirely, was not entirely sealed off during his public life, on his entry into public life. But leaving simple extension this consideration would already draw us into depth and into what we have named the geology of sanctity.

§ 103. — Before entering into it and to summarily exhaust extension and the consideration of extension, M. Laudet seems to ignore that thousands and thousands, that hundreds of thousands of Christian workers have lived with eyes solely fixed on the workshop of Nazareth, that innumerable Christians have lived, have died, have won heaven, have made their salvation with eyes solely fixed on the workshop of Nazareth; that every Christian workshop is an image of the workshop of Nazareth; that these working-women, that these poor people, that these miserable folk do not only people heaven, M. Laudet, that they literally crowd heaven; that one sees only them, in heaven; that there is room only for them; that heaven is full of these little people; that one sees in heaven infinitely more of these little people than of directors of reviews.

Of these little people who have no public life; who consequently do not belong to us.

That Jesus, M. Laudet, is essentially the God of the poor, of the miserable, of the workers, consequently of those who have no public life. Heaven is a heaven of little people.

§ 104. — That just as every Christian workshop is an image of the workshop of Nazareth, even so every Christian family is an image of the family of Nazareth; that just as every Christian worker works as Jesus did, even so every Christian father, every Christian mother loves, instructs, nourishes, raises his children as Joseph and Mary loved, instructed, nourished, raised Jesus, every Christian son loves, honors, nourishes his parents as Jesus loved, honored, nourished his father and mother. But the heresies of M. Laudet are so numerous, his article is so stuffed that we must here pull ourselves together a little and redo our reckoning. The man who suppresses for us Christmas itself, Christmas alone, Il est né, le divin enfant, the man who from the Christian and Catholic liturgy retrenches Christmas alone, the liturgy of Christmas, that a Christian people even retrenches its Christmas carols, finally the man who retrenches everything is not at a few dozen retrenchments more or less. I am beginning to think that we would have done better to count what he keeps. We would certainly already be done.

§ 105. — Historically martyrdom, I mean

public martyrdom, the glory of public martyrdom, the public mission and public martyrdom have been given to very few men. It is a fact. Very few men consequently have had to know it, very few men have had to take as the point of application, as the surface of application of their imitation the public mission and public martyrdom of Jesus and of the other martyrs and of the other saints. Innumerable on the contrary is the legion of Christians and of saints and one must say of martyrs who have been tried in private, who have not been tried publicly. Now we know as one of the firmest propositions of our faith that God makes no difference between the ones and the others and that they receive the same crowns. It is one of the firmest propositions of our faith that the eternal measures are in no way the temporal measures; that neither the rewards nor the pains nor the crownings of any sort are measured by our temporal inscriptions; that a poor man in his bed, that the last of the sick can in the regard of God, (and the whole of Christendom from the ignorant up to the Judgment), secretly merit more than the most glorious of saints. Must we send M. Laudet back to the Prayer to ask God for the good use of illnesses. It is not only the grandeur, it is the very property of our faith that sanctity, that grace operates with a minimum of temporal matter and even that it is never so much at the summit and so much itself as in the minimum of temporal matter. So perfect a bond unites the last of the members to the Crowned Head that the last of the sick, in his bed, is admitted to imitate the very suffering of

Jesus on the cross. The last of the sick, in his bed, literally imitates, effectively imitates, efficaciously imitates the very Passion of Jesus, the martyrdom of Jesus and of the other saints and martyrs. Pascal, M. Laudet, is a Christian author at least equal to M. Anatole France. Yet the Sacrifice of the Cross is a public sacrifice, was a public sacrifice and nothing is so private, nothing is so non-public as a miserable illness that keeps a man nailed to his bed in a miserable room. We must believe, M. Laudet, that Christian communion, that Christian theology takes no account of this distinction, capital in your theology, of the public and the non-public, since passing inconsiderately over your distinction we have received as one of the essential truths of our faith that the most secret of the sick literally imitates the Passion, the prayers of Jesus, the sufferings of Jesus, the Virtues of Jesus, the merits of Jesus, participates in the Passion, in the prayers, in the sufferings, in the Virtues, in the merits of Jesus; that the illness, the prayers, the sufferings, the Virtues, the merits of the most secret sick man on one side and the Passion, the prayers, the sufferings, the Virtues, the merits of Jesus on the other are poured into the same Treasury.

That the last of the sick can, by a sort of consecration to God, of devotion to God, turn his illness into martyrdom, make of his illness the very matter of a martyrdom.

§ 106. — Must we add notably for Joan of Arc

that by a singular election, by an eminent vocation, perhaps unique to this point, she underwent conjointly the secret martyrdom of illness and the public martyrdom of fire. We know by all the texts that she was broken by more than seven years of inner combats, by more than five years of vocation, by a year of battle, (not counting the interior battles), by a year of captivity, by six months of trial when she had to undergo the harshest ordeal.

§ 107. — If few men have been called to public mission and to martyrdom, if the vocation of mission and of martyrdom, if mission itself and martyrdom have been given to few men, in return, or rather underneath we have all received the proper common mission, so to speak, the proper common vocation of saving ourselves; and notably we have all received the common law of work. M. Laudet himself perhaps does not ignore it. Now in Christian morality and even in Christian theology the law of work has no more serious base of application than the daily work of Jesus in the workshop of Nazareth. The law of work is a law, a commandment in the old as in the new Law. But how new, how new, like everything, in the new Law. In the old Law the law of work, the commandment of work proceeded as does all servitude from the fall of Adam. It was a chastisement of justice. Thou shalt eat thy bread by the sweat of thy brow. Jesus assuming as it were this law and the law of humility made of it a tribute of love. Thus was born the new

Work. From then on thousands and hundreds of thousands of Christian workshops have no longer been, are no longer but imitations of the workshop of Nazareth. Man today, such is the new law, such is the new statute, the man today who works is no longer a convict serving his time. The man today who works is a man who does as Jesus did, who imitates Jesus. Daily work is no longer a pain, it is no longer only a pain, it is no longer simply firstly a pain. It is today an imitation of an august daily work. The man who puts in his day is good. He has nothing else to do. Like any other and first of all he is sure thus to imitate Jesus. The man who puts in his day imitates in the first rank Jesus who put in his day. The man, the worker who puts in his non-public day, M. Laudet, imitates in the first rank Jesus the worker, who put in his non-public day. In his non-public life. In the non-public period of his life. Thousands of obscure workshops, M. Laudet, thousands of humble workshops are the reflections among us, reflect, repeat among us, M. le Grix, the obscure workshop, the humble workshop of Nazareth. And this is the very tissue and the marrow of the Christian world. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of men, M. Laudet, of Christian working-women have had only this to do: their day; have had only to work tranquilly from morning to night, with eyes solely fixed on this humble workshop of Nazareth. And he who has only left the workbench and the jack-plane to lie down to die is he who is most agreeable to God. You must get used to this idea, dear M. Laudet, that heaven

is full of these people, it is full of this species, it is not only full, dear sir, of capitalists as fat as you.

§ 108. — M. Laudet is evidently still a Christian for rich parishes. The man who from theology contents himself with suppressing for us, the man who retrenches from us only the mystery of the Incarnation, the man according to whom, in whose system, in whose theology the teachings, the lessons of work and humility of Jesus fall away, do not belong to us, is naturally also the man in whose theology the obediences and patiences of Jesus, the teachings, the so to speak practical patiences, the lessons of obedience of Jesus likewise fall away, do not belong to us. If M. Laudet had some idea, some knowledge of what a real and living Christianity is, of what the very tissue of Christianity is and more profoundly of what the tissue of Christendom itself is, he would know that the Christian family, which makes the very tissue, is strictly imitated from the family of Nazareth, is strictly traced on the family of Nazareth. Every Christian family has its eyes fixed on the family of Nazareth. Thousands and thousands of Christian families, hundreds of thousands, innumerable Christian families have made their salvation and won heaven, together, in family, with eyes solely fixed on the family of Nazareth. The fourth commandment, M. Laudet, that admirable commandment given by God to his people on Sinai was such: Honor your father and your mother,

that you may live long upon the land that the Lord your God shall give you. Such was the commandment in the first Law, the commandment as it were anterior given, dictated by God to his people of Israel by the ministry of Moses. While remaining intact this first law, this commandment as it were anterior took on in the Christian world, in the second law, in the law of love, in the new law, in Christendom, in the law of Christendom as it were a new youth and a new force, literally a new authorization. It is that in fact a new fact was produced for us, a fact of incalculable consequence and import. A model family so to speak functioned before us under our eyes, a family to imitate. Jesus put on this fourth commandment, exercised it, and by that very fact, by that alone, (before us) leaving it the same, rendered it new for us. Jesus put on, both generally and in this particular commandment, this first Law, exercised it, and by that very fact, by that alone, (before us) leaving it the same, respecting it justly, rendered it new for us. It has come to pass this, for us Christians, that Jesus put on this first law, and in this first law this fourth commandment. It took on, it received from it a new youth, a new newness. A workshop and a family shine eternally before us. If M. Laudet had some idea of Christian customs and of what a Christian family is and of our most incorporated habits and of the most ancient traditions of our parishes he would know that there is certainly not a Christian child to whom one has not proposed thousands of

times the little Jesus. It is true that M. Laudet is full of contempt for the little Jesus of the little children. He is also the little Jesus of “when we were little.” Yet it is since that time, it is since then that the Christian family has been instituted. Not instituted by a law alone and by a commandment. But instituted by and on a living example. On an exemplar, and on what an exemplar. Since that day every Christian father and every Christian mother is an image of Joseph and Mary, every Christian son and every Christian daughter is an image of Jesus. Every father and every mother is a pupil, a follower of Joseph and Mary, every son and every daughter is a little pupil, a little follower of Jesus. The children are literally in the school of the little Jesus. Evidently this is very ridiculous to M. Laudet. But we can do nothing about it. Jesus created for us the perfect model of filial obedience and submission at the same time, together with his creating for us the perfect model of manual labor and of patience. And he created these two great models together, these two great models as joined and forming only a single piece of life, these two great models of the very tissue of all Christian life during all those thirty years which in the theology of M. Laudet do not belong to us.

§ 109. — I take a catechism at random. I incur immediately the contempt of M. Laudet. I press on. It is still some catechism for children. I doubly incur the contempt of M. Laudet. I persevere, (because I am courageous). (And in my days of

great courage I would go so far as to confront the contempt of M. Laudet). It is the catechism of the diocese of Paris; illustrated edition. I open to page 104, — lesson VI, — on the IVth commandment. Now the image I see right in the middle of the fourth commandment, at the top of page 105, is naturally the workshop and the family of Nazareth, Jesus as a child, apprentice, working with his father under the gaze of his mother who herself is working. Under the gaze of his working mother. The image bears as “caption” these simple words: “And he was subject to them.” I must say to M. Laudet that indeed this catechism of the diocese of Paris, illustrated edition, is certainly only a silly catechism for little children. And that those are not documents with which one surrounds oneself. Who knows, even, who knows if these drawn images, which one sees in catechisms, are authentic.

§ 110. — “And he was subject to them.” What are these, M. Laudet, these indiscreet words. Would they not tend to give us some information about those parts of the life of Jesus which in the theology of M. Laudet do not belong to us. Who permits himself such indiscretions. Who shows such a lack of respect to M. Laudet. These words, M. Laudet, you perhaps do not ignore, are not from M. E. Thomas, vicar at Saint-Sulpice, author of this catechism. They are from old Luke. II. 51. — Et descendit cum eis, et venit Nazareth; et erat subditus illis. Et mater ejus conservabat omnia verba haec in corde suo.

52. — Et Jesus proficiebat sapientia, et aetate, et gratia apud Deum et homines.

53. — And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth; and he was subject to them. And his mother kept all these words in her heart.

54. — And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and in age, and in grace with God and men.

If the private life of Jesus does not belong to us, M. Laudet, what are these admirable texts doing in the Gospels.

The theology of M. Laudet makes entire portions of the Gospels fall away. But we are coming to that.

§ 111. — Finally or rather in addition Jesus has not only as it were redoubled, he has not only consecrated, authorized, even crowned, he has not only ratified, he has not only renewed the fourth commandment by himself putting on filial obedience and submission, et erat subditus illis; he has in addition, he has in conclusion carried this fourth commandment to its full realization, to all its supernatural power. For the obedience, the submission of Jesus to his foster father and mother, however perfect in themselves and of so eternal a teaching, were yet only a temporal image, a carnal representation of the eternal filial obedience, of the perfect eternal filial submission of Jesus to his Father who art in heaven. The obedience, the submission of all the days of Jesus to Joseph and Mary announced, represented, anticipated the appalling obedience and submission of Holy Thursday.

39. — Et progressus pusillum, procidit in faciem suam, orans, et dicens: Pater mi, si possibile est, transeat a me calix iste: verumtamen non sicut ego volo, sed sicut tu.

40. — Et venit ad discipulos suos, et invenit eos dormientes, et dicit Petro: Sic non potuistis una hora vigilare mecum?

41. — Vigilate, et orate ut non intretis in tentationem. Spiritus quidem promptus est, caro autem infirma.

42. — Iterum secundo abiit, et oravit, dicens: Pater mi, si non potest hic calix transire nisi bibam illum, fiat voluntas tua.

43. — Et venit iterum, et invenit eos dormientes: erant enim oculi eorum gravati.

44. — Et relictis illis iterum abiit, et oravit tertio, eumdem sermonem dicens.

45. — Tunc venit ad discipulos. Et dixit. It is precisely this apprenticeship of thirty years, this submission, this patience, this obedience of thirty years, of all the days of an apprenticeship of thirty years, preparatory, introductory to the submission, to the patience, to the supreme obedience, to the submission, to the patience, to the obedience of the last day that M. Laudet retrenches from us as not belonging to us.

§ 112. — It was fatal that M. Laudet should go back to Jesus and having forbidden us the saints should also forbid us Jesus. There is in heresy itself a kind of internal logic or rather heresy itself

borrows the interior logic of theology. There is in theology such an internal logic, such a skeleton, such a force of logic, there is in faith such a living, organized, organic logic, such a movement and such a rhythm that heresy, which is as the reverse and the counterfeit of theology and of faith, keeps a certain internal logic which is so to speak the reverse, the hollow imprint, the counterfeit of the faithful logic. There is thus an internal force of error which is the hollow of the internal force of truth. It is therefore the very communion of saints, the faithful communion, which drew, in reverse and in hollow, M. Laudet, having denied a part of the saints, to deny the corresponding part of Jesus. And this communion of saints is so perfectly and so eternally bound that the very hollow and the counterfeit of M. Laudet remain bound. It would be one more proof of it, if it were necessary, after so many others. After so many proofs. The saints are so closely bound together and to Jesus in affirmation, so perfectly, so eternally, that in negation itself one cannot separate them.

§ 113. — Coming thus, led thus no longer merely to simple extension and to geography but to depth and to what we have permitted ourselves to call the geology of sanctity, the relation of the public to the private in sanctity, in matter of sanctity, will appear to us to be the following: that in sanctity, in matter of sanctity it is the private that bears the public and that the public is all sustained, all nourished by the private. In sanctity, in matter of sanctity the public

plunges into the private, public virtues literally sustain themselves, nourish themselves, recruit themselves from the private virtues. In matter of sanctity the public comes from the private.

§ 114. — This proposition leaves no doubt for whoever knows a little of the lives of the saints. It is not a question of denying here the distinction of the public and the private. In sanctity even, in matter of sanctity it is pertinent. One must only first say that in general in the whole world and that in particular in matter of sanctity this distinction is almost always much more precarious than it is made out to us to be. The edges between the public and the private are generally much less cut, and less cutting, than they are made out to us to be.

§ 115. — In the measure in which this distinction is founded and in which it is established that saints have received public missions, it is also established that these are particular saints and who have received particular missions.

§ 116. — The discrimination between public saints and private saints and in the public saints between public parts and private parts is perhaps not as fixed as it is made out to us to be. It is perhaps much more precarious and mobile than it is made out to us to be. But in the sense and in the measure in which it is certain, I mean in which it is certain that it is, in the sense and in the measure in which it is constant, in which it is acquired, the relation of the public and the private in matter of sanctity establishes itself

such and in this sense, going in this sense that the public bathes in the private, plunges into the private. The public in matter of sanctity (pro)ceeds from the private. The public is all sustained from the private, all nourished, all born from the private. It is the private that is the proper matter, the base of application, the underside of sanctity. It is the private that is the deep earth. The native matter, the native land of sanctity. It is from the private that sanctity comes, is born. It is from the private that it comes properly. It is in the private that it retempers itself. It is in the private that it finds itself, and refinds itself, at home. It is from the private that sanctity grows. It is the public saints who are particular and it is the public parts, the public sanctities, that are particular. And it is the private saints who are general, it is the private parts, the private sanctities that are general, common, ordinary, literally that are in the order. It is established, it suffices to know in passing the history of the saints who received public missions to know not only that these public saints were particular and that these public missions were particular, but that they were generally and even universally considered by these saints literally as missions, that is to say as sendings, as it were in extraordinary mission; exterior; outside; (and not only in particular mission); and almost outside the order; let us say the word, as chores, extremely disagreeable, that had to be done, because such was the order of God, and he had his reasons, but which were certainly the greatest trial that God could send to his saints. Such was the taste, studium,

that the saints have generally had for public missions. The lives of saints, if M. Laudet only knew one of them, and as if by chance the life of Joan of Arc, in several points, notably the one we have spoken of, the life of Jesus, the lives of public saints are full of resistances so to speak to publicity. It is established that public saints have always been filled with terror at the very idea of a public mission, at the simple eventuality, at the mere command, at the mere idea; that they have always asked God by the merits of Jesus Christ both directly and indirectly through the other saints first and long and keenly and profoundly and sometimes violently not to be charged with these missions, then that they have always asked by the same merits for these proper objects, for these extraordinary missions, extraordinary succors; for they felt as it were uprooted, led astray in these public missions; they felt themselves there outside their very customs, (Joan of Arc felt and said this with an admirable acuity of vision); they felt themselves there in very great danger; in maximo periculo and in an extraordinary trial; they felt themselves there out of their place and as it were provisionally detached, provisionally delegated; they felt themselves affected, extraordinarily and as it were provisionally applied to a trade, to an office that was not theirs; they felt themselves there outside their matter, outside their trade, outside their office; they were there in delegation; they redoubled there their prayers. We know by all the examples and by all the texts that they redoubled there their sacraments. Notably that they used there not only frequent communion,

but daily communion. Joan of Arc, most notably. They felt themselves exposed there. And they asked, by the same merits, generally only to be discharged of it.

Thus the public mission, public life, the public part of life have always been considered by the saints who have had them literally as missions, as sendings, as departures, from which they asked only to return; not perhaps as trials; but as extraordinary ordeals, as a trade in which they were awkward and not trained, for which consequently it was necessary notably to redouble their humilities.

§ 117. — In this embarrassment, in this disarray, in this distress they did not only appeal to prayer and to the sacraments: they fell back so to speak on private life, with which they were bound, remained bound, with which they were (more) familiar, with which they felt themselves (more) reassured, and it was so to speak and even literally with private life that they made public life. It was literally with private life, which they knew, that they made public life, which they did not know. It is with the virtues of private life, with the familiar, familial virtues, with the virtues relatively easy, small, easy, known, portable, in manu, at hand, that they stuffed public life, that they invented, that they forged, that they improvised, that they formed, that they made, that they obtained the public virtues, the virtues of public life. From this matter that they knew, private life, the

virtues of private life, they drew, they elaborated, they obtained, not even by imitation, but by extension, by application, by delegation this matter which they did not know, public life, the virtues of public life. It is not by chance and by a caprice of words, it is by the most profound internal logic of language itself that patience is the virtue of the passion. The Christian saints, the public saints were eminently men, saints, called, vocati, who to guarantee themselves in the extreme danger of extraordinary missions first carried there, began by transporting there the ordinary, usual virtues, the virtues of every day, familiar, the virtues at hand, virtutes manu factas.

§ 118. — There is no doubt and the saints knew it well that there is a sort of proper acquaintance between sanctity and the little life, a particular, proper convenience, a taste of grace for the secret, for the secret virtue, an acquaintance of God for humility (not only for the humility of the heart, but for the humility of the situation itself, as guaranteeing, as temporally registering, as temporally inscribing the humility of the heart), a proper acquaintance of Jesus for the poor and the miserable and the humble and the obscure and the non-public. All the Gospels overflow with a proper tenderness of Jesus for the non-public. Everyone feels well that the poor and the obscure are the favorites in the kingdom of God. It would even be almost unjust, if it were not open to everyone to be poor. The

saints felt this well, the saints understood this well who having become public saints, sent in public missions, that is to say in extraordinary missions, always considered themselves a little as distanced from the court.

§ 119. — The saints provided for this first by carrying, by transporting private life into public life, the virtues of private life into virtues of public life, by prolonging, (one must not even say by augmenting, by increasing, by enlarging), by simply prolonging private life and the virtues of private life into public life and into virtues of public life without the shadow of an interception. By the ministry and in the person of these saints private virtues were promoted, prolonged into public life and virtues, became public virtues, were continued prolonged into public virtues, by the ministry and in the person of these saints private virtues received in public matter their full and direct application. The public virtues were the private virtues themselves, become public, prolonged public, the same become public. A man like Saint Louis was a man, a saint who governed the kingdom of France exactly, directly, rigorously as a good father of a family governs his household, as a Christian father of a family governs his wife and his children, — his house. — That is to say that in Christian theology, in real Christendom the government of the house of France is directly imitated from the government of that house of Nazareth which according to M. Laudet and in the theology of M. Laudet does not belong to us. But

perhaps the king of France is not a great enough personage, perhaps Saint Louis of the French is not a public enough personage for M. Laudet.

§ 120. — Second the saints provided for this by living, by continuing to live their private life all the way across, all within, all beneath their public life. Christian life is organized in such a way, (and M. Laudet alone ignores it), that whatever the public destinies, whatever the public vocations of a Christian may be, the very tissue of his private life receives no alteration, no attenuation, no diminution of any kind. No infringement. To whatever destinies, to whatever missions, to whatever public vocations a Christian is called, he remains always a Christian, he always lives Christian, his private Christianity, his private virtue is always the same, has always to exercise itself as fully, as the same. Private life runs beneath public life, maintains, sustains, bears, supports, nourishes public life. Private virtues run beneath public virtues, maintain, sustain, bear, support, nourish public virtues. The public saints, doing public, do not go out of the private. The private is the very tissue. Publica, public missions are never anything but emergences, eminences. Public vocations, public missions are never anything but islets; and it is the private that is the deep sea. There is a secret bond, a secret affection of grace for the secret, for the little life, for the secret life, for the little people. The saints know it well, the saints feel it

well, and it is for this that the public saints remain in constant liaison with private life, with the little life. In double liaison, first by binding their public life to their private life, their public virtues to their private virtues in such a way that this public life is only this private life continually prolonged, and that these public virtues are only these private virtues continually prolonged, the same, the same, second by binding their public life to their private life, their public virtues to their private virtues in such a way that this public life perpetually plunges into this private life, that these public virtues perpetually plunge into these private virtues. Private life, private virtues are for the public saint the perpetually present reserve, into which he perpetually plunges. When we see the public saints perpetually retrench themselves into the private, return at every moment, withdraw at every moment back into the humilities of the private, make retreat, let us not believe that this return, that this coming back is for them an exercise of humility, that would cost them. It is the contrary. It is the public mission that costs them and on the contrary it is on private life, it is on private virtues that they fall back. Of themselves. To reassure themselves. To take support and to take nourishment. When we see them fall back thus constantly on private life, on private virtues, let us not believe that this is an exercise that they impose on themselves, that they inflict on themselves, trials, expiations, to pay for their grandeurs. On the contrary it is by a natural retraction, supernaturally natural, that they come back, that they fall back, that they return

into the private. When one sees them in all the lives of the saints return so obstinately into the private, into the private virtues one would be tempted to believe that they would seek there an exercise, as an expiation, a compensation of humility (or humilities) for their grandeurs. On the contrary it is then that they were following the slope. They came back to take up in the private a renewal of the current of grace. One could almost say, one can say that the temptation on the contrary was for them to return into the private, to plunge back into the little life. The temptation was to flee these extraordinary missions, these extraordinarily perilous missions. To hide themselves, to bury themselves in the little life. Far from private life, far from private virtues being for the public saints an exercise, a trial, on the contrary it is public life, it is the public mission that was the ordeal above all, and it is private life, private virtues, the private mission, the common private mission, retreat, silence, secrecy, shadow, the corner, the garden of grace, the little life that was the asylum where they fell back. The public missions made obedience play. The sweet missions of private life made only repose play.

§ 121. — The Christian people felt it so well, the just and sinners in communion with its saints the Christian people knew it so well that it is for this that what it asked of its saints, of all its saints and notably of its public saints was first of all, either for the whole part, or for the greatest part, first the private virtues; first private life. A saint was a saint only if the very tissue of his life was holy, only if

his daily life was holy, only if his private life was sanctity. Together it was this that the Christian people asked first of its saints and it is this first, it is this underneath that the saints well knew that their people first asked of them. For it was this that was first, and common, and nourishment and grace. It was this that was the known, the reassuring, the familiar, the nourishing, the gracious. A public saint who returned into the private was a saint who reassured himself. This is particularly perceptible in all the mission of Joan of Arc.

§ 122. — It is for this that if M. Laudet had the slightest idea of what the life of Christendom really was he would know that all the trials of the Church bore by far on nothing so much as on private life, on private mores, on private virtues. What the Christian people asked above all and concerning all of its saints was a private life, private mores, private virtues. Well, this demand is in some way for us historically registered, historically inscribed by this and in this form, notarized, that the trials of the Church required above all and concerning all a private life, private mores, private virtues.

§ 123. — Notably if M. Laudet had some idea, among the trials of the Church, of what a trial of canonization is, he would know that what these trials, — public, I suppose, — require above all of the candidate is a private life, private mores, private virtues. One asked above all of the candidate, — one

asked him officially and publicly, M. Laudet, — one asks of him still, — a private life, good mores, private mores, private virtues. One asked above all of the saint, — one still asks of him, — to be a good Christian. One only asked him extraordinary things, when one asked him any, afterwards. — I am a good Christian, — the terrible word of Joan of Arc at the Trial, the word of the last retrenchment, the litany of the last retrenchment. This cry of the last agony, of the last combat, according to M. Laudet would not belong to us. M. Laudet is not without having heard speak of a certain sire of Joinville who has left us a life, a history of Saint Louis. This life is in reality a (historical) contribution to an inquiry, to a trial of canonization. M. Laudet will perhaps concede us that Saint Louis, king of France, was a public man. Then how is it that in this life of Saint Louis, by the sire of Joinville, there is an entire considerable part that is of this private life that supposedly does not belong to us and that all the rest of the book is still full of this same private life.

§ 124. — Likewise and so to speak parallelly if M. Laudet had any idea, if M. Laudet had the slightest idea of what a heresy trial is, which is supposedly as it were the reverse of a canonization trial, as it were a canonization trial in hollow, he would know that in a heresy trial the inquiry, or the inquiries, did not bear on

anything so much, did not undertake so to speak anything so much, did not seize anything so much, did not reach anything so much as private life, private mores, private sins, private vices.

§ 125. — Particularly, and notably, and almost eminently, (Jesus alone being eminent), and namely to come at last to what we wanted to say, to what we had to say about Joan of Arc, if M. Laudet had any idea, if M. Laudet had the slightest idea of what the trials of Joan of Arc were, (which were, let us not forget, trials of the Church, ecclesiastical trials), notably and firstly of what the trial of condemnation was, (which was, let us not forget, a heresy trial), if M. Laudet had only opened his Quicherat, not the France, M. Laudet, the Quicherat, the only one who has made, who has given us an edition of the Procès, he would know that the inquiry, or rather the inquiries bore for a very great part, and perhaps for the greatest part, on the mores, on private life, on allegations reaching the private virtues.

§ 126. — So that, — and this will be our last conclusion on this point, — so that what M. Laudet forbids us to consider in the life of Joan of Arc, her private life, her private virtues, her private merits, is not only the model and the support and the beginning and the nourishment and as it were the essence of her public life, of her public virtues, of her public merits, but it is textually what

the Trial of Condemnation is full of, and what the Trial of Rehabilitation is full of. The Trial of Rehabilitation consisting of undoing a heresy trial.

§ 127. — For what the ecclesiastical tribunals, the trials of the Church, the more or less preparatory or confirmative inquiries of the Church asked of the candidate or of the accused, this other candidate, this candidate in reverse, what they required of the candidate or of the accused, what the interrogations bore on, was generally, was for a great part, was generally for the greatest part a private matter.

§ 128. — Now nothing is so public, on the other hand, so done in the presence of the Christian people, as a trial of the Church, a trial of canonization, a heresy trial, a trial of rehabilitation, ecclesiastical inquiries.

§ 129. — Consequently and on this point this will be our last formula what the judges of the Church, what the inquirers of the Church publicly asked, publicly required, publicly sought after, publicly absolved, publicly condemned, publicly honored was precisely generally private life, the private virtues, the private vices, the private sins, the private merits. The saint had constantly to make his proofs of private purity. One had generally to make against the heretic the proofs of private impurity. One can say that the ecclesiastical method in these matters consisted essentially in

projecting upon private life the flood of public light, for the edification of the Christian people. It is that at bottom for the Christian, M. Laudet, there is neither private nor public, everything taking place equally under the gaze of God.

§ 130. — Particularly it is for this that we know that the so-called private life of Joan of Arc was the object of incessant inquiries, or rather we know that Joan of Arc, like any eminent person in Christendom, and who said herself sent from God, was in her so-called private life the object of incessant inquiries. To publish the private, that is the very principle, that is the very ecclesiastical method. The old principle of public confession runs beneath all Christendom. The Christian in the parish, in Christendom, is always the first Christian in the community, the ancient Christian, the antique faithful always ready, always submitted to public confession, to common and as it were mutual confession.

§ 131. — Inquiry at Chinon, inquiry at Poitiers on arriving before the king; inquiries at Paris; inquiries at Rouen; inquiries at Domremy and generally in Lorraine; inquiries everywhere and always these were still so to speak only proper inquiries, only official, dated, temporary, partial and so to speak fragmentary inquiries. In a certain sense particular. But what shall we say of that so to speak perpetual, literally perpetual inquiry that the Christian people pressed upon its saints as soon as a saint

had begun to emerge under the gaze of all. For whoever has the slightest idea of what the Christian world was, for whoever has only looked a little at a text, I mean an authentic text, a trial, a chronicle, it is evident that these saints, hardly designated, lived under the gaze of the people. The people had such thirst to have any, the Christian people, such thirst to find any. Also as soon as a slightly emerging soul was confusedly designated, warned by a secret instinct, so profound, of a flock seeking its shepherd, all the Christian people pressed around the saint who was coming. The people awaited the saint. The saint who was rising rose henceforth, lived henceforth under the gaze of a whole people, under a kind of surveillance of dulia. This is particularly perceptible in the whole history of the advent of Joan of Arc; and also, though less apparently, in all the history of her reign, and of her contestation, and of her martyrdom, and of her captivity. It was a continual Christian inquiry, a perpetual publicity, a kind of latent ambient common public judgment anticipating the formal judgments, anticipating, advancing the last judgment itself.

§ 132. — The saint lived, as such, under the gaze of all. An immense expectation, an immense attention of communion was upon him. The saint whole belonged to all. Omnibus totus. All to all. In those ages of a certain roughness there was even in the Christian people a certain gluttony of sanctity. Not only a certain appetite. In the chronicles, in the authentic texts the people often seems to us

to brutalize the saints, (as it then brutalized their relics), in order to extract from them so to speak by force the efficacy.

§ 133. — “The accused, says M. Laudet, the controverted, the disputed, is precisely all of Joan of Arc, at least all of her that we are permitted to know, because it is the whole missionary and the whole martyr, and Joan belongs to us only as missionary and martyr.” — M. Laudet only forgets one point, that is that of Joan of Arc missionary and martyr what was precisely contested, what was controverted, what was disputed, what was accused was precisely for a very great part, perhaps for the greatest part her private life. The trial of condemnation is full of it. Of her private life. The trial of rehabilitation is full of stories of her childhood reported by witnesses, — public I suppose, — by the people of her time and of her country.

It is precisely this that both trials are full of.

§ 134. — Likewise, eminently Jesus naturally could only teach, could only preach by a public preaching. One wonders how he could have done otherwise. Preach, teach otherwise. He could only speak to his people, address his people publicly. But what was he teaching thus publicly. What was the matter of his teaching, of his public preaching. The matter of his teaching, of his public preaching was private. All these stories of gourds, of lamps,

of bushel, of widows, of drachmas, of toll-collectors, of swineherds, of shepherds, whom he called pastors, of cowherds, of vinegrowers, of publicans, of farmers, of sharecroppers, of small cultivators, of the infirm, of vagabonds, of reapers, of centurions, of Samaritans, of innkeepers, were they public affairs, were they affairs of State. The place that affairs of State hold in the teaching of the Gospels is minute. The didrachmas, the tribute to Caesar. That is almost anomalous, that almost makes a stain in the tissue of this teaching. That is almost of another tone. So totally is the whole matter of this public teaching a private matter. Jesus teaches publicly to live as a poor man, to live privately, as a non-public man. Literally what Jesus preaches, in extreme rigor, in all the rigor, in the extreme rigor of terms what Jesus teaches, is not to live as he teaches, it is to live as he teaches to live, he is all the beginning, and he teaches to live precisely as he himself lived before beginning to teach. Which comes to saying that his private life, such as he had lived it before the beginning of his public teaching, was the matter of his teaching, became the matter of which afterwards he made his teaching. Which comes to saying that for Jesus himself we are led to fall back from the public onto the private. And it is not astonishing that we are led to do it for Jesus as for the other saints if what we have said of the eminent representation of the saints in Jesus, in the very detail, corresponded to mystical reality.

§ 135. — Particularly Jesus the public man, preacher and missionary, has formally commanded us to live as children. Matthew, XVIII-3, sicut parvuli. Children not being generally public personages. Jesus Christ himself thus falls us back, and in those very terms, himself being a man and public, upon the life of “when we were little.” Finally if M. Laudet despises the little saints, the child saints, what does he make of Bernadette. Of so many others. It is constant that the Virgin prefers to appear to children.

§ 136. — This representation of the saints among themselves and in Jesus down to the detail, and as a result and before in the first degree this parallelism of the saints among themselves and with Jesus, down to the detail, is perhaps never as gripping, is perhaps never imposed on Christian thought with an authority as gripping as in the consideration of the history of the sanctity of Joan of Arc. No mystical parallelism, no mystical representation, of a saint in a saint, of a saint in Jesus, is perhaps pushed, in all the history of mystical communion, to a degree as gripping as the representation, in the very detail, of Joan of Arc in Jesus. One must hold notably that the Mysteries of M. Péguy would not keep their own crowning if this mystical representation ceased for a single instant to be the great internal regulation of his work.

§ 137. — Let us come back down to M. Laudet. What M. Laudet

does not want to see, what he does not want to consider, is that one sometimes makes public with private, public men with private men, and reciprocally. Public events are big, are nourished with private events, and resound indefinitely in private events. Public men are big, are nourished by private men, and resound indefinitely so to speak in private men. And reciprocally all those witnesses who came, who were called from Domremy to Paris or to Rouen for the Trial of Rehabilitation or to Reims, what were they but little people, poor, private people, non-public, whom a sort of great brusque vocation, an ensemble vocation, suddenly drew on to do, to constitute the greatest public action, the greatest operation, the greatest public work. Such-and-such, wife of so-and-so; such a one, wife of such a one, is there anything more gripping, and truly more anguishing, than this procession of little people, than this rosary of poor and ignorant folk, — (but they know the greatest science, for they have been witnesses of the greatest fact), — who at the Trial of Rehabilitation come innocently to bring their stone to the greatest public monument, to the greatest monument of history. For me I know nothing so poignant in the world as the poor testimonies, or rather as the poor testimonies of these women who follow one another as in procession, such a one, wife of such a one, born such a one, of the parish of Domremy, the women of her age, if she had lived, who had known her as a little girl, who had played with her, who had seen her leave and who come to testify, to bring here stories

not only to the tribunal of history and of the public, but to the tribunal of the mystical, to a tribunal of the Church, to the very tribunal of God, under the faith of a sacred oath, as innocently, as obscurely, as ignorantly as they would testify on the doorstep of their house, as they would tell stories to the old village priest.

§ 138. — Who does not see that it is precisely this, — and this alone, — which gives us all security. We have such confidence in statesmen, in public men that we do not feel reassured that a story is great, nor above all that it is authentic, I mean a public story, a story of State, as long as we see it founded on their (sole) testimonies, and itself composed, founded of them; at least of them alone. We feel ourselves reassured on the contrary, we want a great story to have grandeur, and even that it be authentic, a story of memory, a public story, a story of State, a story of history, only if we feel, if we know that it proceeds directly from the people. Such is the confidence we have in them and in the public. We public, we people, we want only people and private. We want a great story to be nourished directly from the people. And a great profane story and all the more so a great sacred story. Confidence does not reign. Confidence in publics, in officials, ultimately in intellectuals. We want every great story

to proceed directly from the people. Then, on this account alone we are reassured, we hold it for good. For authentic. Not got up. Not fabricated, not feigned, not bookish. Not simulated, not imaginary. We always distrust what is intellectual and public, what comes from intellectual and public, what is composed of intellectual and public. That always appears to us incurably imaginary, scholastic. We want to touch the bottom, the rough; the real. And we have the impression of touching the bottom only when we touch the people. The rest is doubtful. The people alone is first. We will hold the republican and imperial epic for an authentic epic only if we have the captain’s memoirs, the testimony of the simple soldier. This for the heroes. And here for the saints. Only then do we feel reassured. Only then do we believe that it is true, more rigorously that it is real. Only then do we want any of it. We do want it. The people alone is the deep earth. The people alone testifies. Likewise for the saints, parallelly for the saints we feel reassured, we want any of them, we want them only when they come out of the people and are brought to us by the people, when the people is there, when the people testifies, when the people answers for them, when this old woman, who is married, who has four children, comes to the bar and says: I knew her when she was little, before she left the country. She was like this, like that. Every Sunday morning she went to Mass. Then we take her. Then we say: That’s it,

we have her. We have it. We laugh at finally having a text. We laugh from security. We want the people to be in the very tissue, in the texture. The doctors do not only have a long memory, the doctors inspire in us a confidence so moderate that as long as we travel in their sole company we have this impression, against which we strive in vain, that we are making an imaginary voyage, this impression of treading an imaginary ground. The people alone renders us the earth. The scholastic Sorbonne in this respect is worth the sociological Sorbonne. The Sorbonne of the fourteenth century is as incapable of guaranteeing for us a saint as the Sorbonne of the twentieth century is incapable of guaranteeing for us a hero. The people alone guarantees the hero. The people alone guarantees the saint. The people alone is firm enough. The people alone is deep enough. The people alone is earth enough.

§ 139. — One must therefore have the greatest care to note that whether one takes the people in extension or whether one takes it in depth. The people in extension makes naturally the public. It is even the same word. Populus, publicus. The one is the direct adjective of the other. But in depth on the contrary the adjective people shows well that all the force of the people is in its private.

§ 140. — The Christian people, in totality and considered as a public, that is to say the Christian people in extension, receives as saints (and as heroes) by a secret instinct only those who are guaranteed to it, who

are given to it as such by the people in depth, by people-witnesses, and not, in no way those who are given to it as such by the learned.

§ 141. — We the people we only begin to believe it, that this one is a hero, that this one is a saint, when this is said to us by some of the people, by people-testimonies even if it be across temporal centuries. All that the doctors tell us is for us less than nothing.

§ 142. — Which comes to saying that public composed of public, constituted of public, supported, guaranteed by public says nothing worth anything to us and will always remain suspect and imaginary to us, and that the only public we want is a public freshly, recently, de novo, firstly composed, constituted, supported, guaranteed of private. It is diametrically the contrary of what M. Laudet believes. We want the hero to come out of the people, to be of the people. We want the saint to come out of the people, to be of the people. We want the public to come out directly and immediately from the private, to be directly and immediately of the private. To be directly and immediately nourished from the private. That above all contact has not been broken. We want the saint to come out and to be of the parish. And we want it to be this old parishioner woman who comes to attest it to us.

§ 143. — M. Laudet believes that one makes the public only with the public. That the public is so to speak

in advance public. We see on the contrary that the public draws its strength only from the private, comes, holds, is born, grows only from the private. Draws its nourishment only from the private. One makes the public only with the private. This public, which belongs to us, is made only with this private, which does not belong to us. M. Laudet is shocked at it. M. Laudet did not see so far. But has M. Laudet not heard say, (at the Revue hebdomadaire, that center of our information), that sometimes one makes military men out of civilians. It must be said in defense of M. Laudet that for some time in fact one has been making above all civilians out of military men.

§ 144. — M. Laudet does not permit us to consider the childhood of Joan of Arc; he claims that the childhood of Joan of Arc does not belong to us. But he who has the superstition of history, does he even know that those true historians, Quicherat, Siméon Luce, have as historians studied the history of childhood exactly like the history of the mission and of the martyrdom.

§ 145. — That the public can only be, can only come about through the private, by the private, that it can incessantly only make itself, remake itself, renew itself by the private, that it is so to speak and even literally in itself unfecund, that it cannot come out of itself, refresh itself, make itself, remake itself, renew itself of itself, come out of itself, be born of itself, that it cannot be of itself, come from itself and so to speak from its inside, that is what appears in all history. By

and in all temporal history and perhaps by and in all spiritual history. By the history of individuals, of families, of races, of promotions, of peoples, of founders, of generations, by the history of the destinations, of the vocations of men and of peoples, by all the history of all the great persons. That the public cannot recognize itself, nourish itself of itself, that it is struck in this respect by a kind of incessant and as it were reflected sterility, incessantly reflected, — (I mean this word reflected in its physical sense as of an organic reflection comparable to optical reflection), — that the public can only incessantly (re)cognize itself, nourish itself only from the private, that it is always necessary to take it up from the foot, to start over from the foot, not only is what appears by the event itself, by all the history of producers, of great families and great promotions, of great peoples and great men, but it is a phenomenon that presents itself with such constancy, it is a phenomenon together so apparent so to speak and so profound that one can say not only that it is a historical law, — (one demands scientific laws, here is one), — and not only a scientific law, and not only literally an experimental law, a law of experience, and of total experience itself, of an experience and of universal experience, but that this kind of so evident law is, makes one of the great laws of the internal regulation of the event itself.

§ 146. — Which comes to saying that what we find here is this very law of historical

inscription so striking, so gripping for every disinterested gaze, for every gaze that wants to see. Singular law of temporal (historical) inscription. But what is most singular is that by a kind of, by one knows not what contamination of the temporal, coming from the temporal, this law receives one knows not what enlargement, has obtained one knows not what surplus value, what increase of import, what prolongation of one knows not what disquieting, what mysterious dominion even into spiritual inscription. History has no consideration for the public. Or rather it has consideration of the public in order to avoid constantly renewing its source there. It makes public. But it only wants to make it with private. Not accidentally; but constantly, essentially, legally. By its very procedure, by its most profound method. One would almost have to say by a process, so much this time does this method present of automatism and almost of scientific mechanism. History does not pass where one wishes. History passes where it wishes. Men, peoples, promotions, races without number would have made unheard-of sacrifices to be inscribed in the book temporally eternal. History always passes elsewhere. And to those who wanted nothing it gives everything. It is always those who did not expect it, who do not think of it, who do not know what it is who are brushed, who are touched, who are mown down by the great wing. It is those little parish girls, those little peasant women who were the sisters of Joan of Arc and who as women came to depose at the greatest trial in the world after the trial of Jesus. And it was

those boatmen, those fishermen, those toll-collectors who were as it were snatched up in passing, as it were drawn on, lifted by a shove of the shoulder, as it were raked up by the Son of God.

§ 147. — What are you complaining about? says M. Laudet. I only suppress for you the canticle of Simeon, and the canticle of Zechariah, and the canticle of the Virgin, which has become your Magnificat, and a few others, which do not belong to you any more. Ah, I was forgetting. I also suppress for you half of the Angelic Salutation, the first half, the proper angelic salutation itself, ave Maria, gratia plena, the source and welling-up of grace of your salutation.

§ 148. — After that, says M. Laudet, and this being so, and I being this, evidently nothing remained for me to do but to incriminate M. Péguy of modernism. I did not fail to do so. “Bad modernism.” I knew that this incrimination, or this allegation, or this injury of modernism had become in a certain world an incrimination, an allegation, an omnibus injury, a sort of skeleton key of denunciation. So nothing remained for me but to make myself a bit of a denouncer. Of a certain denunciation. I did not fail to do so. I did it slyly however. I clearly marked that I was incriminating M. Péguy only of bad modernism. Ah if it were of the good kind, isn’t that so, I wouldn’t say. Yes, one could see. One could chat. We are good. We ask only to chat. But there, this unfortunate Péguy has no luck. He falls into a modernism, and just so it is into the bad. As that

happens. There are beings who are very unfortunate. He is very unfortunate. After all we like him well.

§ 149. — M. Laudet, M. Laudet do not afflict yourself. What is bad modernism, M. Laudet. There is no good kind. And yours, which is modernism pure and simple, M. Laudet, is necessarily and by that very fact bad modernism and bad modernism. To write what you write, to deny, to retrench the essential principles of the faith, to break, to retrench the very skeleton and inside to cry out at (bad) modernism, that is to renew the classic trick of the thief who cries thief. You are right besides. It is a trick that always succeeds.

§ 150. — You are wrong, sir, I assure you, says M. Laudet, you are wrong to get angry. I did cry out at bad modernism. I did make myself the denouncer of this bad modernism. But I did it with so much reticence, with so much slyness, withdrawing with one hand what I was advancing with the other. In truth I was constrained to it. Rather pity me. It was indeed for the good of this Péguy. I have so much devotion. I was quite chagrined by it. I said it, and one can believe me, in a tone of offended dignity which deceived no one, in that tone of prudish commiseration which gives a notice to the tone of this tone of importuned haughtiness, of detachment, of distance, of not putting one’s fingers in, in this tone of severity which complains itself of being so forced to be severe: ”… finally, in a word which I do not much

like to employ, of bad modernism.” This poor child, who did not know, who was not in the habit of employing this word, behold he has been forced to employ it. It is still this Péguy who has forced him.

§ 151. — He is suffering. Let us continue the inventory of this sufferer. In a note M. Laudet wishes that there must be a Mystery of the faith. M. Laudet abuses. We did not ask him for collaboration. Let him then leave the mysteries of M. Péguy to organize themselves as they will. If M. Laudet knew a little how to read, if he had only read a little to see, if he had understood the slightest thing not only of the Mystery of Charity but of this hard and tender fourteenth century, and fifteenth, and of this hard and tender Christendom and of all Christendom, he would know that there is only one mystery that we are sure cannot exist, and that is, as if by chance, a mystery of the faith. The question of the faith, of believing or not believing, not only obviously did not pose itself for a saint like Joan of Arc, but if M. Laudet had any idea, any intelligence of what that people of Christendom was, he would know that this question no more posed itself together for the whole world, for all that Christendom, one would almost have to borrow the language of the others and say: for all that humanity. It was not made like that. It was not of a nature, it was not made in such a way as to doubt of believing, to hesitate of believing. Literally the sinners were no more tempted by it than the saints. It was not their kind. The temptation not to believe was only to come to wholly

other worlds, to wholly new worlds, which are precisely the modern worlds.

§ 152. — We arrive here at the summit, at this summit of baseness, we attain to that proposition long announced, which was coming, which was coming, so scandalously extraordinary that every Christian heart will be revolted by it in its deepest sources. To tell the truth we do not arrive there yet in one stretch. That would be too much courage. We do not arrive there first except by the stage of a disquietude. “…which is perhaps not closer to the truth, M. Laudet tells us in his so incurably uncertain French, than the inexplicable predestined woman that they used to teach us long ago.” Either this disquietude, or this insidious phrase means nothing, which seems to me all the same a little difficult, or what is this inexplicable predestined woman that they used to teach us long ago and that was not close to the truth.

§ 153. — Let us not doubt of it. This inexplicable predestined woman that they used to teach M. Laudet long ago and that M. Laudet today finds so little close to the truth, is quite simply the Joan of Arc of the catechism; it is again here the catechism that comes back; I mean it is the Joan of Arc as she emerges from all the teaching of the catechism on the saints. In a word it is the legend that comes back under this new form. It is still the Joan of Arc of “when we were little.” In M. Laudet’s “inexplicable” French, voisine means roughly close to; vrai means real; inex-

plicable means mystical; prédestinée means called, elected, commanded, dedicated, vocata; on means “the priests,” notably the unfortunate priest who had M. Laudet in his catechism; nous means us moderns who happily are no longer so stupid; us moderns who finally; us others who are liberated; enseignait means taught; jadis means in the days, you understand, in the times of ignorance.

§ 154. — … “which is perhaps not closer to the truth than the inexplicable predestined woman they used to teach us long ago.” … The inexplicable predestined woman they used to teach us long ago, I do not know if one grasps well, in this formula where there is not one exact word, not one proper word, I do not know if one hears in this formula all the contempt the author put into it for us imbeciles who still believe in the catechism and in sacred history. Jadis above all is a masterpiece, in its genre; and even in all the genres. The inexplicable predestined woman they used to teach us long ago. Long ago, you understand, is in the days; in the days when one was stupid; in the dark night of the Middle Ages; in the days when one went to catechism; that they used to teach us long ago, who knows, in the days when M. Laudet himself went to catechism (everyone has had his weaknesses), and perhaps even believed in the teachings of his priest. The inexplicable predestined woman they used to teach us long ago. — Long ago, my children, were those dark times when whole peoples, when peoples of imbeciles received, in the last of the parishes,

in the most miserable catechisms, by the ministry of the poorest priests, the teachings of the Church. — Long ago, my friends, were those distant times when the lofty spirit of M. Laudet had not yet opened to the lucidities, to the intelligences, to the explanations of the modern world.

§ 155. — What is not closer to the truth, for M. Laudet, or rather that which is not closer to the truth, — (and again there is a perhaps which gives to understand that what is coming is the least close to the truth there is), — is what is most real for us, is perhaps what alone is real for us, what at least for us is the source of all reality, it is the supernatural Joan of Arc, finally Saint Joan of Arc.

§ 156. — When we say the Joan of Arc of the catechism and of sacred history we mean of that sort of little sacred history of Christendom that accompanied at the catechism and followed the sacred history of the people of Israel.

§ 157. — Already in an extremely doubtful sentence, of form and of thought, (which often goes together), very badly written, or rather not written at all, where M. Laudet represented that M. Péguy “was attempting to enchain the chimera…” it certainly seemed, under the hazardous uncertainty and under the doubtful or rather not doubtful taste of the expressions, that the chimera to be chained was sanctity itself.

§ 158. — By these paths of uncertainty, by these stages of disquietude and by these doubtful relays we have arrived at last; at last we climb; at last we reach this summit of baseness, this proposition so scandalously extraordinary that one wonders how this man could have written it. — I imagined her, he says of Joan of Arc as a child, I imagined her more naive. How, without that, could she have believed her voices?

§ 159. — If one did not see, if one did not find this proposition printed at full length in the Revue hebdomadaire, one would not believe it, one wonders how it could have passed through the head of its author. It is so extraordinary that it is altogether gripping, properly altogether suffocating, and that at once one sees well that one has nothing to say to it. And that one will never have anything to say to it. When Joan of Arc hears and sees her voices, when a saint receives her vocation by the ministry of other saints, M. Laudet concludes that she was naive. — I imagined her more naive. How, without that, could she have believed her voices?

§ 160. — This proposition is so dumbfounding that it carries with it its own commentary. One stands quite stupid. One has nothing to say. One looks at the sentence like an idiot. — I imagined her more naive. How, without that, could she have believed her voices?

§ 161. — In this extraordinary proposition, fitting crowning of so many heresies, finally appears

the true thought of M. Laudet, or rather the depth of the thought of M. Laudet. The depth of the thought of M. Laudet, let us say it without disguise, is that those who believe are imbeciles. It is that to believe is good for people like us. But a great lord, but a great, but a lofty spirit like him. Think of it; the director of the Revue hebdomadaire. M. Laudet himself. The depth of the thought, (if it is permitted to speak so), of M. Laudet himself, is that to believe is good for us imbeciles. That he who believes, isn’t it so, is always a little silly, between us, a little simple, a little naive. That he is a good fellow. That one must encourage that (or it), naturally, for the world, yes, for women, for children, for country priests, for little people, for the poor, for the miserable, but that we, isn’t it so, between men, in the smoking room… — Well yes, one knows where one stands. One knows how to make allowance for what is reasonable.

§ 162. — Everything in the preceding allegations was leading us up to this depth of thought of M. Laudet. There it is that those attempts went, that they ended up at, those echelons, those scouts, that “blasphemous rationalism of Thalamas” (as if the rationalism of M. Laudet were not infinitely more blasphemous), (in its polished coldness and its so distinguishedly contemptuous coldness), those “pious and lay exegeses,” and “our popular history of France,” and “when we were little,” and “supernatural” and “saintly,” (“finally Saint Joan of Arc,” saintly

placed here thus as a sort of citation, in indirect style, and on an inflection having, receiving one knows not what singular tone of contempt). (And finally placed as curiously, as unfortunately). Finally one would not finish, in nuancing the tone of the intellectual contempt of M. Laudet for the deepest realities of our faith.

§ 163. — There they went, there it was that they were going, there that those alignments of scouts were ending up, so many doubtful words, or unfortunately not doubtful, so many more doubtful thoughts. So many worm-eaten words, so many more worm-eaten thoughts. “Let it above all be well understood. — (yes one understands, M. Laudet), — let it above all be well understood that this is not here a historical undertaking. Péguy does not recount Joan of Arc. He has not surrounded himself with documents. Has he even read the histories, the pieces of the trial? I know nothing of it. He represents her; he reanimates her, present in the midst of us a second time. The legend suffices for him; he does not criticize it; he looks at it with clear French eyes, and also this living imprint, this luminous furrow that Joan of Arc has traced and which is still read on the whole country of France.”

§ 164. — So many doubtful words, so many worm-eaten words, so many hollow words, so many intellectual and vain cogitations, cogitationes inanes, so many sad announcers. “To neglect history and prefer to it the legend, in order to restore to us more surely

the true Joan of Arc!…” — … “of disquietude, because a poet was before me who was attempting to enchain the chimera…”

§ 165. — Sad cortege, sad apparitors. — “The accused, the controverted, the disputed, is precisely all of Joan of Arc, at least all of her that we are permitted to know, because it is the whole missionary and the whole martyr; and Joan belongs to us only as missionary and martyr, just as Christ belongs to us only after the day when it pleased him, — (when it pleased him, what devotion, M. the intellectual, what submission to the wills of Christ), — when it pleased him to come out of his long years of thick shadow. — (this is still indeed a delicacy of an intellectual, not to grasp private life. M. the intellectual is too discreet, than to grasp a private life). — The rest, — (rest, M. the intellectual, what gallantry of expression; so all that we have said, all that we have vainly tried to enumerate, that is the rest; let us see what becomes of this rest): — The rest, especially when this rest consists — we now know, at least in part, M. Laudet, a little of what this rest consists of) — especially when this rest consists in wanting to explain sanctity, — (M. Laudet sometimes you reproach us with explaining, and sometimes you reproach us with “inexplicable predestined woman”), — in wanting to explain sanctity, to represent it, in disentangling the sublime amalgam — (disentangling the sublime amalgam, what French, M. Laudet; disentangling; sublime; amal-

gam; can one put more grossnesses in three words, more lumpish heaviness and improprieties; and inconventions) — in disentangling the sublime amalgam which, in a soul, mingles with human ferments — (yes, yes, but let us not interrupt any longer, we must finish with it) — mingles with human ferments the unknowable divine virtue, in claiming to discern the measure of consciousness that a holy soul has of its sanctity, I obscurely feel — (oh you, M. Laudet, you feel obscurely; but also you think and you write clearly) — … that it is… finally, in a word that I do not much like to employ, bad modernism.”

§ 166. — Sad cortege; sad announcers; we are coming to it. — … “which is perhaps not closer to the truth than the inexplicable predestined woman they used to teach us long ago.” — We attain it. — “I imagined her more naive. How, without that, could she have believed her voices?” We shall find others, post-crownings.

§ 167. — One must here be careful not to speak of worldly Catholicism and to believe that we are quarreling with worldly Catholicism. This is infinitely more grave. Whatever the weaknesses of worldly Catholicism, it is a Catholicism after all. It is a bad Catholicism, but at last it is a Catholicism. The Catholicism of M. Laudet is not a Catholicism at all. It is not even a Christianity at all.

§ 168. — I do not say that M. Laudet does not very properly have the vice of worldliness. But he makes of this

vice so to speak an infinitely more grave use than worldly Catholicism. Worldly Catholicism is a bad Catholicism. It is a very bad Christianity. However in dejection its weaknesses are, they are never anything but weaknesses of dejection and of debilitation. They are not, if I may say, weaknesses of injunction, of commandment. Whatever legitimate repulsion, whatever pity worldly Catholicism inspires, at least it has consciousness, it has knowledge of its weakness and does not wish to make it pass for strength. It does not present its weakness as a strength, for a strength. It does not boast of it. It is not proud of its weakness. It avows its debilitation as a debilitation. It avows its dejection as a dejection. It does not commit this double fault, first of making propositions of it, and second of wanting to impose these propositions; first of making propositions of it, and second of these propositions themselves making commandments. Thus worldly Catholicism can be hateful, it can be contemptible, it can be condemnable, it can be miserable, that is to say it can be pitiable. But it is not heretical, neither in the first nor in the second degree. It does not bear itself as a candidate for heresy. It moves only in the order of sin. Sins of baseness, sins of weakness, which are sins of sloth. But it does not bear itself even into the order of heresy.

§ 169. — Quite other is the attitude, doubly other, and doubly so to speak infinitely more grave is the situation of M. Fernand Laudet. His vice of worldliness

bears him so to speak doubly infinitely further. First M. Laudet makes propositions; and second he enjoins them upon us. First, in the first degree M. Laudet proposes; second, in the second degree M. Laudet imposes. First, in the first degree M. Laudet makes propositions. To what point, how far heretical, we have perhaps sufficiently seen. Second, in the second degree M. Laudet makes commandments. In what tone, the man who says: This belongs to you, this does not belong to you, in the life of Jesus and of the saints, — in what tone we have perhaps sufficiently seen. Of his heretical propositions M. Laudet makes heretical commandments. He is heretical in his proposition(s) and heretical in his commandment.

§ 170. — He is all injunction. He is one of the highest specimens of the man who does not believe and who claims to limit the faith of others. He is the man who says, with a knowing air: Why yes, we well know what it is, we well know how it is. He is for a reasonable religion. He is the man who says: One must be reasonable. Let us say the word: He is the man who wants, he is the man who says: A religion is needed for the people.

§ 171. — Which is indeed, in one sense, the deepest injury that has ever been addressed to our faith. But once again it is not a question of signaling this single injury every time it represents itself. It is a question here of a man, it is a question here of a review that gives itself out

as “right-thinking,” that tries to make itself a clientele in the Catholic world. There is the attempt at diversion of the faithful consciences that we shall not cease to denounce.

§ 172. — Nothing is so dangerous for our faith as this disguised atheism. All is not lost, far from it, with a revolutionary atheism. Misunderstood charities, flare-ups of charity may burn there turned aside, which some day will be led back. But there is nothing to be done with a reactionary atheism, with a bourgeois atheism. There is nothing to expect, one must hope nothing of a reactionary atheism, of a bourgeois atheism. It is an atheism without spark, that will never ignite, that will never flame. It is an atheism without charity, and even without imitation or counterfeit of charity. It is therefore an atheism without hope. Hope can play only in a certain minimum of charity. Hope, the gleam of hope can only be ignited from a certain fire. From reactionary atheism, from bourgeois atheism one can expect nothing, but ash and dust, because all there is only death and ash.

It is an atheism without hope.

§ 173. — Shame on him who has the shame. One must not only consider, in an atheism, by how much the faith is lacking, but whence comes that it is lacking. That is to say one must not consider only, one must not count only, one must not measure only in extension, in geography what is the surface of

the common faith, of the common belief that a heart so to speak no longer covers. And to see and to count and to measure what it still covers and by a calculation, by a rule of fractions to calculate the proportion, the ratio of the one and the other, of the faithful surface and the unfaithful surface, to the common total surface. One must see, above all one must see, above all one must examine in depth, in geology, whence comes the lack in the lacking surfaces. There are very large lacks, that are not deep. There are very narrow lacks, that are infinitely deep. There are lacks that would terrify in surface, at which one need only laugh.

§ 174. — Of all the causes of lack the most injurious for our faith, one of the most frequent unfortunately in the modern world, the most pernicious without any doubt, the most contemptible, the ugliest, the most offensive for our faith, the most shameful too, perhaps the only one truly shameful is evidently shame. It is unfortunately that of M. Laudet. Shame on the shamed. Shame implies such cowardice that it is without resource. Shame, woe to him who has shame. Shame alone is shameful. We have nothing to do among ourselves with shamed Christians, in the sense of this word, of this adjective, where one says: a shamed poor man.

§ 175. — One may believe or not believe, those are two different situations. For us Christians the one is the faithful situation, the other is the unfaithful situation. For us the unfaithful are men who are not enlightened.

One may believe more or less in extension, in geography. That is to say the particular, individual belief may cover a more or less large part of the common total surface. There are countless gradations and variations of partly faithful, partly unfaithful situations. For us Christians the partly faithful partly unfaithful are men who are only partly enlightened.

§ 176. — But what shall one say of the man, and will he not incur the common contempt, the contempt of both, of the faithful and of the unfaithful, what shall one say of the man who wants to deceive both, who wants to play at both windows, who wants to play both games, hold both terms of the wager together, draw pay from both lists, figure at once on the temporal lists and on the eternal list. The man who with one hand pretends to believe in order to make himself a fat temporal career in the right-thinking world, deceive the Catholics, make himself a (fat) Catholic clientele; and with the other hand. With the other hand the man who has shame, the man who trembles with shame lest sometimes one should believe that he believes.

§ 177. — Vae tepidis; woe to the lukewarm. Shame on the shamed. Woe and shame to him who has shame. It is not so much again here a question of believing or not believing. And what is the surface of coverage and the lacks of coverage of belief. It is a question of knowing what is the deep source of unbelief, what are the depths of these lacks, whence come, whence go back

these incredulities. Now no source is as shameful as shame. And fear. And of all the fears the most shameful is certainly the fear of ridicule, of being ridiculous, of appearing ridiculous, the fear of passing for an imbecile. One may believe or not believe (anyhow we understand each other here). But shame on him who would deny his God in order not to make the people of wit smile. Shame on him who would deny his faith in order not to fall into the ridiculous, in order not to lend himself to a smile, in order not to pass for an imbecile. It is a question here of the man who does not occupy himself with knowing whether he believes or does not believe. It is a question of the man who has only one care, who has only one thought: not to make M. Anatole France smile. It is a question of the man who would sell his God in order not to be ridiculous. It is a question of the man who fears, of the man who is afraid, of the unfortunate one who trembles in his skin from the fear of being afraid, from the fear of appearing, from the fear of having the air of being duped (by what he says), from the fear of making the augurs of the Intellectual Party smile. It is a question of the man, of the unfortunate frightened one, who looks on all sides, who timidly casts circling glances to be quite sure that no one of the honorable assembly has smiled at him, at his faith, at his God. It is the man who casts preventive glances all around him. At society. Glances of connivance. It is the man who trembles. It is the man whose gaze asks pardon in advance for God; in the drawing rooms.

§ 178. — Such is unfortunately exactly the situation of M. Laudet, or of M. le Grix, according to how he

names himself. His whole article trembles, his whole article sweats the fear of appearing to believe in the eyes of the Intellectual Party. — Come now, you understand me well, I am not so stupid as to believe everything, I am not so stupid as to believe that, such is the shameful leitmotif, the leitmotif of cowardice that runs beneath all this article. And above all I am not so stupid as to believe like them, to believe like everyone, to believe like the common, like the little people, to believe like the poor, like the children, like the peoples. And you understand me well, as the old soldiers’ song says.

§ 179. — To banish from Christendom all that is of it, all that makes its source and its strength. It is long since perhaps we have witnessed such an undertaking of demolition of Christendom from within, in its within. To retrench, to banish from Christendom childhood itself, which is certainly the purest source of it. To suppress from the sources of sanctity this childhood which is certainly the purest source of it. The first source. The most ancient, the most elder, the deepest source. Finally M. Laudet has therefore never heard speak, even in society, he has therefore never heard pass these expressions, even in music: holy childhood, the childhood of Christ. M. Laudet has therefore never seen passing in the streets a band of little boarding-school girls, and no one has ever said to him: It is the Holy-Childhood. If M. Laudet suppresses, if M. Laudet abrogates childhood from sanctity, what does M. Laudet make of the child saints, the

purest, the tenderest, the most celestial, and without speaking here of the Holy Innocents what does M. Laudet make of that glorious childhood of Saint Geneviève, which will remain in the centuries the light of Paris, as the failure of Joan of Arc will remain its great shadow.

§ 180. — I do not believe that one has witnessed for a long time such an attempt at disorganization of Christianity. Of Christendom itself. If you retrench from Christianity, M. Laudet, from Christendom, from sanctity, from what belongs to us, the childhood of Christ, what do you do of those innumerable works with which our cathedrals are full. What do you do of our cathedrals themselves and of our churches. What do you do of so many works, not only works of art, as our moderns see them, but works of an eternal piety. Works which do not detach themselves from the cult and from prayer and from adoration to the point that they are as it were, that they are literally a carnal inscription, a temporal inscription, a lapidary inscription, in stone, petrified, in the very stone, of the cult and of prayer, the most interior, and of adoration the most intimate. The body of adoration. Works of stone, inscriptions, incorporations; works of which one must not only say that they make body with the cult, that they make body with prayer, that they make body with adoration; but works of which one must say that they are the very body of the cult, the very body of prayer, the very body of adoration. The inscription in the hard, in the temporal, in the exterior stone, of the deepest interior life

and the most tender. Works that do not separate themselves not only from the cult and from prayer and from adoration, but works in the church that do not separate themselves from the church, works in the cathedral that do not separate themselves from the cathedral. Works that are not only the ornament and the crowning, works that are the very tissue of the church and of the cathedral, the texture, the stone in the stone. And the churches and the cathedrals are not only houses, general, and these works are not particular objects placed therein. Lodged in these houses. But both, the cathedrals and the works, together, the ones in the others and the others lodging the ones, together are the same tissue, the same stone, the same temporal eternal monument, together the same eternal, historical, temporal inscription, together the same hard carnal body of cult, of piety, the same hard hollowed body of prayer and of interior life and of eloquent, of so eloquent mute adoration. New iconoclast it is yet these works, it is these twenty centuries of inscription that M. Laudet means to deny us. It is these twenty centuries of monumental inscription that this commander means to suppress for us, withdraw from us, abrogate for us, retrench from us; forbid us. You have therefore never seen, M. Laudet, in one of our churches or our cathedrals, where they are in their place, or at least in an exhibition or in a museum, where they are not in their place, painting or statue, canvas or wood or stone, you have therefore never seen the child Jesus borne on the arms of his mother, and Saint Anne, and Saint John the Baptist, and old Joachim, and Saint Joseph. And

Zechariah and Saint Elizabeth. Those two or three households. And in one corner the donor with his sons; and in the other corner the donor’s wife with her daughters; and in the background a beautiful French village.

§ 181. — To banish from Christendom youth, to retrench from our Christianity childhood our first heritage, flower of Christendom, source of our grace. To retrench, to banish from Christendom poverty, work, the family, those three pillars of every life, what an attempt at organic decomposition, at disorganization, at dismemberment. So M. Laudet has never heard speak of most holy Poverty, and of the Nuptials of the Saint and Poverty.

§ 182. — To banish from Christendom, to retrench illness, this portable factory of martyrdom, this factory of martyrdom at home. When on the contrary illness is so integral a part of the mechanism of sanctity that one does not know whether the sick saints are not the greatest among the saints. When illness makes so essential a piece of the very mechanism, of the articulation of sanctity that one does not know whether a saint like Saint Louis is greater as king, as crusader, or as a sick man. To such a point that Joinville, who was perhaps as great a doctor in Christendom as M. Laudet, and as great a clerk, wanted him to be put in the number of the martyrs, and not only, as he was, in the number of the confessors. So true is it that for the Christian people the great pain makes a true martyrdom. I. 5. Et de ce me semble-il que

on ne li fist mie assez, quant on ne le mist ou nombre des martirs, pour les grans peines que il souffri ou pelerinage de la croix, par l’espace de six ans que je fu en sa compagnie, et pour ce meismement que il ensui Notre-Seignour ou fait de la croiz. Car se Diex morut en la croiz, aussi fist-il; car croisiez estoit-il quant il mourut à Thunes.

§ 183. — I. 2… The first part will tell how he governed himself all his time according to God and according to the Church, and for the profit of his kingdom. — In this first part how much private life. And even in the second. (and with God’s help the book is divided into two parts). The second part of the book speaks of his great chivalries and his great feats of arms.

§ 184. — To strip Christianity of misery, poverty, illness is to undo it. Reciprocally and together to strip misery, poverty, illness of interior Christendom, of Christianity, is to undo it. Christianity is the great regulator, internal, of misery, of poverty, of illness. Misery, poverty, illness is certainly a spring, a great internal regulator of Christianity.

§ 185. — By retrenching private life M. Laudet decenters Christianity. All Christendom culminates in the crowning of the cross. But all Christendom begins at a rough cradle which was a manger.

§ 186. — Every sick person can make himself a cross, raise

himself to martyrdom, raise himself to participating in the Passion. Make of his bed a grid and a rack. It is therefore that this distinction of the public and the private does not hold in the regard of God.

§ 187. — “How, without that, could she have believed her voices?”

“Her first voice in Péguy’s mind, says M. Laudet, is manifestly Gervaise.” M. Laudet, let M. Péguy alone then. Joan of Arc’s voices, M. Laudet, are Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. I. 71. Interrogata an erat vox angeli quae loquebatur ei, vel an erat vox Sancti aut Sanctae, aut Dei sine medio: respondit quod illa vox erat sanctae Katharinae et sanctae Margaretae. Et figurae earum sunt coronatae pulchris coronis, multum opulenter et multum pretiose.

I. 72. Interrogata, quomodo scit quod sunt illae duae Sanctae; an bene cognoscat unam ab altera: respondit quod bene scit quod sunt ipsae, et bene cognoscit unam ab altera.

I. 72. Interrogata, quomodo bene cognoscit unam (ab) altera: respondit quod cognoscit eas per salutationem quam ei faciunt. Dixit etiam quod bene sunt septem anni elapsi, quod ipsam acceperunt gubernandam. Dixit etiam quod illas Sanctas per hoc cognoscit quod se nominant ei.

I. 72. Item dixit quod habuerat confortationem a sancto Michaele.

I. 73. Interrogata quae praedictarum sibi apparitionum venit primo ad ipsam: respondit quod sanctus Michael primo venit.

§ 188. — You do not seem to suspect for a single moment, M. Laudet, that when one speaks of the voices of Joan of Arc one speaks very precisely; one knows very well what one means; one means something very precise. One means Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret. When one speaks of the voices of Joan of Arc one does not speak vaguely, one does not mean exteriorizations of sensations, one does not speak the language of the school, one does not only follow the language but the thought of the School, one is a hundred leagues from interior speech and from that poor M. Egger. It is not a question of objectivation and projection outward and all the trembling. It is not a question of bringing out all the apparatus of the laboratory. One means, it is a question of Saint Michael, of Saint Catherine, and of Saint Margaret.

§ 189. — It is not a question of exteriorization of facts of consciousness. There are men, — and they have unfortunately become innumerable in modern times, — who believe that the voices of Joan of Arc were hallucinations; we must say the word, let us not draw back before the word, and just as we have employed the word atheist literally technically, without a shadow of insult, so we employ here on our side the word hallucination so to speak likewise without a shadow of insult to us. Men who have unfortunately become innumerable in the modern world

believe that the voices of Joan of Arc were projections out of her of her own movements of heart, of a courage, of a race, of an ardor, of a wholly human charity. They believe that she was a heroine. They believe, unfortunately they teach that the voices of Joan of Arc were the exteriorizations of her states of consciousness, the objectivations of her facts of consciousness; an ardent heart, burning with charity, who taken from the youngest childhood in a system of theology translates, projects in this system, frames in this frame, projects in visions of this theology her own movements. At the limit an ardent soul who projects in external divine inspirations, coming from outside, her own human inspirations interior, internal, come from within. Let us say the word, without offense to anyone, these for them are hallucinations. Hallucinations, I will grant it, so to speak in all good faith. Hallucinations so to speak for the good motive. Lofty and noble and ardent hallucinations. If one wishes again unique hallucinations. Hallucinations such as would not be given to many others. Hallucinations such as would be given to no other. Rare, unique hallucinations. Heroic hallucinations. Hallucinations that would make the proof that a soul is a great soul, a heroic soul and humanly a holy soul. But after all hallucinations. In this system Joan of Arc would be, is a hallucinated woman. A hallucinated woman if I may say of (the very) first order. The purest, the noblest, the greatest, the holiest, (humanly), of hallucinated souls. A hallucinated soul if one

wishes still infinitely heroic, infinitely (humanly) holy; humanly divine, for they do not always draw back before this word; and several even affect and particularly favor it; without its being always by pose nor by a larceny; which would then be, which is sometimes of doubtful taste. Finally a hallucinated soul infinitely superior, a hallucinated soul, a hallucinated woman of infinitely more worth than so many sane souls. — A hallucinated woman in short.

§ 190. — That is to say, let us not flee the words, a madwoman. Without offending anyone and in all good faith a madwoman. A non-healthy soul, not in possession, in power, in enjoyment of the common, normal, regular power and health. An extraordinary madwoman, a heroic madwoman, a humanly holy, humanly divine madwoman, a sublime madwoman. Finally a madwoman.

§ 191. — Generally these men have a system, teach a system, — and it is among all a system at once physical and metaphysical; that is to say on the one hand both physiological and psychological and sociological, and on the other hand metaphysical), — (among all metaphysical), — a system where bound themselves, — (as M. Laudet was), — bound in hollow, drawn by the real communion of saints, by the real bond of saints, they believe, they teach that generally our saints are madmen, notably hallucinated, that namely Jesus, the eminent saint, is eminently a madman, notably a hallucinated one.

§ 192. — For us Christians these men are men who are not enlightened and men who are not deep enough. They lack lights that we have had the good fortune to receive. They do not see what we see, what bursts upon our eyes. I see, I know, I believe, I am disabused. They are duped. They do not see into spiritual realities. They are not deep; they do not penetrate, they do not descend, they do not delve, they do not deepen into spiritual realities.

§ 193. — But finally as long as these men are in good faith, — (and many of them are in good faith), — not only must we not and we cannot refuse them our esteem, but still more, and above all, and first we must not and we cannot think of refusing them all the spiritual helps that we can have at our disposal.

§ 194. — But what is, now what is first, what is primary, what is essentially this good faith that we are in the right, that we have the right, and the duty, to ask of them. This good faith consists evidently, this elementary good faith, this so to speak gross good faith, the first and as it were the largest that we ought, that we can ask of them consists evidently in not wanting to enter, I mean that they should not want to enter into our house, penetrate among us under little blue cloaks. This wholly simple elementary probity, this good faith that we ask of them, that we have

not even to ask of them, that they render us naturally, before we have to ask it of them, without our having to ask it of them, is quite simply not to say they are Catholic and not to want to pass themselves off as Christians.

§ 195. — One must render them this justice that that is what they generally do and it is for this that we are relatively at ease with them. Neither does M. Anatole France say he is Catholic, nor is M. Georges Dumas a pillar of the sacristy. So one can see them, one can chat. They seek to deceive no one.

§ 196. — Quite other is unfortunately the situation of M. Laudet, unless he calls himself M. le Grix, and of the Revue hebdomadaire, and of M. le Grix, and of M. Laudet behind M. le Grix. Literally he wants to deceive everyone. It is an ambidextrous bad faith. He wants to deceive equally our adversaries and us. He incurs equal contempt from our adversaries and from us.

§ 197. — Such is unfortunately exactly doubly the situation of M. Laudet toward us; among us; in our house. He enters our house only to betray us. He enters our house only to sell us. This man who sells his God (for a smile, I mean in order not to bear the smile of an augur of the Intellectual Party) (dry lust), this man who sells his God also sells Christendom. He enters our house only to sell us. Such is unfortu-

nately exactly I say doubly the situation of M. Laudet among us. I say doubly, for the truths of faith that he renounces, he renounces them because he is ashamed of them. And the truths of faith he keeps, he is ashamed of them. He is ashamed of keeping them.

§ 198. — Wolves are wolves and sheep are sheep. But what shall one say not of the bad shepherd. What shall one say of the false shepherd, of the thief who enters the sheepfold disguised as a shepherd. There will come thieves. What shall one say of the man who only enters among us, of the man, of the review that comes to make itself a fat Catholic clientele and which only enters among us in order to introduce slyly, fraudulently, under cover, familiarly the atheistic, materialist theses, propositions, the atheistic, materialist metaphysics.

§ 199. — Our thesis, M. Laudet, our Christian position, our proposition is, the voice of our reason is, (and not only the cry of our heart), that sanctity is health itself, I mean very namely our sanctity, I mean to say Christian sanctity, the sanctity of our saints; that our saints are not madmen; particularly that they are not hallucinated. That our saints are sane. Sanctos est sanos. That this sanctity is health itself, that it is the highest spiritual health, the firmest, the deepest. Finally M. Laudet we do not go looking for our saints at the Salpêtrière. And those who go looking for them there have nothing to do among us.

§ 200. — M. le Grix, M. Laudet wants to make us a shameful Christianity, a shameful Christendom, which would be ashamed of itself, ashamed of God. A second-zone Christianity, Christendom. The Church is one, M. Laudet, the communion is one in every sense, notably in this one, that there is only one Church of one zone, only one Christendom of one zone; of the first.

§ 201. — How much private life in every Church, in every Christianity, in all Christendom. Everywhere.

§ 202. — We do not go looking for our saints at the Salpêtrière. Nor any. Nor eminently Jesus.

§ 203. — Jesus belongs to us entirely. Evidently this is extraordinary, when one thinks of it. But it is the very secret, it is the mystery of the Redemption.

§ 204. — Jesus put on the human infirmities, hunger, thirst, sleep; that infirmity summary, aging. He also put on infirmity, intimacy.

§ 205. — He suppresses Christmas for us, the half of the year.

§ 206. — This birth of the year. Of the year of a year and of the eternal year.

§ 207. — Let us clear away. “to furnish Joan with motives of exaltation, writes M. Laudet, to materialize the first voices of her conscience.” — It is the same heresy.

§ 208. — “the modern accent of this Mystery,” writes M. Laudet. — It is the same retort of modernism.

§ 209. — (Péguy), writes M. Laudet, “is mistaken (literally, “I think he is mistaken) because he is, whatever he may do, a man of the twentieth century, a man informed by the twentieth century, even if he wants, by will and by passion, to remake himself a soul of the fifteenth.” If M. Laudet wrote French, informed would mean what it ought to mean, put into a certain form. In the slack language M. Laudet writes, informed means who has received information, that is to say, (in the sense of newspapers), reports, news.

Let us put this sentence of M. Laudet into French. It means. That the information, the report, the news that a man of the twentieth century, a man informed by the twentieth century receives is that one cannot remake oneself what M. Laudet calls a soul of the fifteenth, and which is quite simply a Christian soul.

§ 210. — It is not a question of “remaking oneself,” M. Laudet, “a soul of the fifteenth.” It is not a question here of snobbery, and of an archaeology and an antiquarian hardware of soul. It is a question simply, M. Laudet, of having the soul one has, or rather of being the soul one is. Christendom is in time, M. Laudet, Christianity is one, the Church is one, the communion is one. It is for this that the Christian has in no way, has in no manner need to have recourse to an

archaism of soul, and that nothing would be as silly, as criminal, as dangerous as such an archaism.

§ 211. — He comes to sit at our table and he only eats our bread to betray the eternal Bread.

§ 212. — It is not in clinics, M. Laudet, it is not at the Salpêtrière that we go looking for our saints. For us Christians sanctity is all health. It is the sinner who is sick.

§ 213. — If M. Laudet had any idea of what communion is, and the Church, and Christianity, and Christendom, he would know precisely that the communion of saints is, in one of its senses, precisely this direct seizure that we have, we Christians, not only of the saints of the fifteenth century, but together of the saints of all the centuries, and as much as of any others of the saints of the first century, and together eminently of Jesus, by prayer and by the sacraments, by grace, by the merits of Jesus Christ and of the saints, this immediate, instantaneous, intemporal, eternal seizure, without our having to do any archaeology of soul.

§ 214. — One must render M. Laudet this justice that he is consistent here. He is consistent with himself and in his heresy. He is going to complete his thought immediately. “if Péguy cannot rediscover, if he prays, the charming or terrible candor of the ages of faith.”

§ 215. — There is no doubt that the candor of the

ages of faith joins up with the naïveté of Joan of Arc who believed her voices. This idea that whoever believes is necessarily an imbecile is one of the rare ideas of M. Laudet, (if it is permitted to speak so), which presents a bit of consistency. Charming or terrible candor of the ages of faith is there to coax, to deceive the Catholic clientele, but it is candor that carries (so to speak) the thought. It is candor that is the word. Charming or terrible is there too for literature, for the well-done, for the expected elegance, for the customary bow. But let us do M. Laudet more honor than he does himself. What is an age of faith.

§ 216. — One must agree rigorously about this expression that one sees often coming out of a bit everywhere. To speak rigorously, to speak properly all ages are ages of faith. All the temporal centuries are the centuries of Jesus. This distinction between centuries that would be of faith and centuries that would not be of faith is vain, is hollow, falls.

§ 217. — There is only one distinction that is worth anything, there is only one distinction that counts, there is only one distinction that is founded, that is rigorous between the temporal centuries, and it is not at all the distinction, become current so to speak in the modern world, between ages of faith and ages of incredulity. There is only one distinction that is, and it is between the centuries of the old law, which was the law of

justice, and the centuries of the new law, which is the law of love.

§ 218. — Since Jesus, since the advent, since the incarnation, since the annunciation of Jesus we are under one single and same law, which is the law of love. Since Jesus, post Christum natum, all the temporal centuries are equally situated under the same level, all the temporal centuries are regulated under the same common internal regulation, which is the regulation of the law of love. In this sense all the centuries of Christendom are equal, are the same, are even the same. Since Jesus all the temporal centuries are the same, are the same, are of the same infinitely profound nature, of the same mystical texture, literally are of the same eternity.

§ 219. — There is the only distinction that exists, there is the only classification that matters. When one then speaks of the ages of faith, one must be careful that one then alludes, that one makes a reference to a general historical fact that must be handled so to speak only with the most extreme circumspection.

§ 220. — The virtue of Faith, which is the first of the three Theological, decomposes immediately so to speak into two great virtues, which would be belief, or proper faith, and fidelity. Failures of faith, of belief, falling rather into the order of heresy, failures of fidelity falling rather into the order of sin. Failures of faith,

unbeliefs and misbeliefs, being rather heretical, constituting rather propositions of heresy, and failures, infidelities not generally constituting formal propositions.

§ 221. — If one is willing not to lose sight of this distinction of the second degree and if one is willing to consider first this second virtue of fidelity, second in great Faith, and if one is willing not to put oneself into the unfortunate disposition of mind of so many bad Christians who think only of condemning their brothers, themselves forgetting that it has been said: Judge not, if one is willing not to put oneself into this unfortunate attitude of heart, not only unfortunate, but criminal, and above all so profoundly un-Christian; if one is willing to look with a simple heart at what is passing in us and around us, one will find that in the modern world, or rather in the Christian world while it is traversing the modern period, while it is bathing in the modern world there are (must one say still; one must say already; one must say always) a very great number of fidelities.

§ 222. — Combatted more than ever, beaten by all the winds numerous fidelities flower.

§ 223. — What shall it be of beliefs; and properly of faiths. When one speaks of ages of faith, if one means that during centuries, which were centuries of Christendom, which were centuries of the law of love, which

were centuries of the reign of grace, anni Domini, anni gratiae Domini, faith, belief was common, was so to speak and literally public, was in the common blood and veins, was in the people, went without saying, was so to speak of common right, received not only an assent but a public, solemn, official celebration, and that today it is no longer so, one is right. One is historically right. One is only noting, recording a historical fact. But here again one must record it only with the most extreme attention, one must handle it only with the most extreme circumspection.

§ 224. — It is first permitted to ask oneself whether our modern fidelities, — private, M. Laudet, — necessarily become private, I mean to say non-public in this sense that they generally no longer receive the public celebration, the celebration of the people and of the State, non-solemn, non-official, it is a question whether our modern fidelities, I mean our Christian fidelities bathing in the modern world, assailed, beaten by all the winds, beaten by so many ordeals, and which have just passed intact through these two centuries of intellectual ordeals, which have just traversed unharmed, unbreached, unaltered these two, these three centuries of intellectualist ordeals; it is a great question to know whether our fidelities, whether our modern beliefs, that is to say Christian, bathing in the modern world, traversing intact the modern world, the modern

age, the modern centuries, the two and the several intellectualist centuries do not receive from this a singular beauty, a beauty not yet obtained, and a singular grandeur in the eyes of God. It is an eternal question to know whether our modern sanctities, that is to say our Christian sanctities plunging into the modern world, into this vastatio, into this abyss of incredulity, of unbelief, of infidelity of the modern world, isolated like lighthouses that a sea would in vain assail tossed for nearly three centuries, are not, would not be the most agreeable in the eyes of God. Nolite judicare, we shall not judge it, and it is not we, this is too often forgotten, who are charged with making the judgment. But without going up to the saints, up to our modern saints, chronologically modern, we sinners must avoid falling into pride. It is perhaps not pride to see. It is perhaps not pride. To note around us. That assailed on all sides, tried on all sides, in no way shaken our modern constancies, our modern fidelities, our modern beliefs, chronologically modern, isolated in this modern world, beaten in a whole world, tirelessly assailed, indefatigably beaten, inexhaustibly beaten by the waves and the tempests, always standing, alone in a whole world, standing in a whole sea inexhaustibly tossed, alone in a whole sea, intact, entire, never, in no way shaken, never, in no way chipped, never, in no way breached, end by making,

by constituting, by raising a beautiful monument in the face of God. To the glory of God.

§ 225. — And above all I insist a monument that one had never seen. That our situation is new, that our combat is new, it is perhaps not for us to say it, but after all who does not see that our situation is new, that our combat is new. That this modern Church, that this modern Christendom, — Christian bathing in the modern world, Christian traversing the modern world, the modern period has a kind of great tragic beauty proper to it, almost a great beauty not of a widow but of a woman who alone keeps a Fortress. One of those Breton women, one of those heroic Frenchwomen, one of those tragic chatelaines who for years and years kept the Château intact for the Lord and for the Master, for the Spouse. Who does not see that our Belief and our Fidelity is more than ever a Reality. That our Constancy, that our Faith, that our belief, that our fidelity has a proper value, a value hitherto unknown, having passed precisely through ordeals hitherto unknown, a unique value, a grandeur not yet tested, a full meaning, a meaning of ordeal. It is a question, an eternal question, to know whether ignorance is nearer to God, or if it is experience, if ignorance is more beautiful in the regard of God, or if it is experience, if ignorance is more agreeable to God, or if it is experience. But what we can say, because we see it, that we have only

to see it, is that our constancies, that our fidelities, that our beliefs have a certain new beauty proper to them, a certain value, a certain new grandeur proper to them. As though invented for us. As though created for this modern world. Our fidelities are as more faithful than the ancient fidelities. Our beliefs are fidelities as more faithful than the ancient fidelities. Far from our faiths being diminished, as M. Laudet would have it, they are perhaps in a certain sense as augmented. As illustrated. More than ever they are faiths that hold fast. Miles Christi, every Christian today is a soldier; the soldier of Christ. There is no more tranquil Christian. These Crusades that our fathers went to seek even on the lands of the Infidels, non solum in terras Infidelium, sed, ut ita dicam, in terras ipsas infideles, they are the ones who have today rejoined us on the contrary, they are the ones who at present have rejoined us, and we have them at home. Our fidelities are citadels. These crusades that transported peoples, that transported a continent onto a continent, that hurled continents one upon the other, have transported themselves back to us, have flowed back upon us, have come back even into our houses. As a tide, in the form of a tide of incredulity they have flowed back to us. We no longer go to bring the combat to the Infidels. It is the unfaithful gone astray, the common, diffuse or precise, informal and formal, informal or formal, generally diffused unfaithful, the unfaithful of common right, and still more it is the infidelities that have brought back the combat to us at home. The least of us is a

soldier. The least of us is literally a crusader. Our fathers as a tide of people, as a tide of army invaded unfaithful continents. At present on the contrary it is the tide of infidelity on the contrary that holds the sea, that holds the high sea and which incessantly assails us on all sides. All our houses are fortresses in periculo maris, in the peril of the sea. The holy war is everywhere. It is always. It is for this that it no longer needs to be preached anywhere. I mean at a determined point. That it no longer needs to be preached ever. I mean at a determined moment. It is what now goes without saying, what is of common right. It is for this that it no longer needs to be decreed. Signified. It is always. It is everywhere. It is no longer the Hundred Years War. It is at this hour a war of two hundred or one hundred fifty and odd years. This holy war which once advanced like a great tide whose name was known, this continental, transcontinental war that whole peoples, that continental armies transported from one continent to the other, broken today, crumbled into a thousand tides it comes today to beat the threshold of our door. Thus we are all islets beaten by an incessant tempest and our houses are all fortresses in the sea. What is this to say, if not that the virtues that then were required only of a certain fraction of Christendom today are required of all of Christendom. It is what M. Laudet calls a debilitation, a diminution, a sagging of faith. It is the contrary, M. Laudet. Who does not see

on the contrary that it is the contrary. The virtues that were required only of a part are today required of the whole. Of everyone. The virtues that were required only of a few, of several, are today required of all, of the least. A war, virtues that were only temporary, fragmentary, today are required constant, permanent, total, temporally eternal. A war, virtues that were voluntary, since they made the object and matter of a vow, today are required, exigated, imperiously exigated without even, before even we have to be concerned with it. Without our being consulted. Without anyone asking us, without our having to give our opinion. It is the case to say it: Everyone is a soldier despite his consent. What proof of confidence in the troops. It is literally an obligatory military service and it is extremely remarkable that civil societies have exactly followed the same law, the law of Christendom. It is a mass levy. What was required only of the veteran troops, what was asked only of the grognard is today asked of the conscript. What was of the domain of the vow, and consequently left to the liberty of each one, has become the common law. The sea beats the threshold of our doors. A vow, and of perpetual war, has been made without us for us before our birth, by the sole fact that we are born into these temporal centuries. It is for this that our constancies, that our fidelities, that our beliefs have this beauty, new, this rarity, this invention, this innovation of beauty, of being perpetually beaten unbeatable. They have counted so much on

us that where the others were free we are forced. Constrained. What was offered to the others, on us is imposed. What for the others was extraordinary, for us is ordinary, goes without saying. It is the very tissue of our life, the tissue of our courage. It is what M. Laudet calls a diminution, a deperdition, a slackening, a sagging of our faith, a diminution, a deperdition, a slackening, a sagging, a collapse of Christendom. A diminution in extension, in geography, I grant him, it is a historical fact, and even a capital historical fact, who does not see it. But who does not also see that this diminution itself, capital, quantitative, has drawn for Christianity itself, for Christendom, for the Christians who resisted a new status, a condition perhaps infinitely deeper, a fidelity perhaps infinitely more tested, a condition perhaps infinitely more deeply delved into depth, into geology. Our fathers needed to cross themselves, themselves, and to transport themselves in order to make the crusade. Us God has crossed himself, what proof of confidence, for an incessant crusade in place. The weakest women, the children in the cradle are already besieged. The war beats the threshold of our doors. We do not need to go seek it, to go carry it. It is it that seeks us. And that finds us. The virtues that were required only of soldiers so to speak, of men-at-arms, of the lord in armor today are required of this woman and this child. It is from this that our constancies, it is from this that our fidelities, it is from this that our beliefs receive, it is from this that they

put on this unique grandeur, this tragic obsidional beauty, unique in the world, this beauty of fidelity in investment, which makes the grandeur, which makes the unique tragic beauty of the great military sieges, of the siege of Orléans and of the siege of Paris and why not say it of Rochereau in Belfort, of Masséna in Genoa. We are all today placed at the breach. We are all at the frontier. The frontier is everywhere. The war is everywhere, broken, crumbled into a thousand pieces, crumbled. We are all placed at the marches of the kingdom. We are all marquises, it is certain that we are waging wars that our elders had not waged, we are all marquises, as that William III, called of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, wanted that theologian to be. IX. 46. “a uns grans maistres de divinité.” 48. ”— Or vous dirai-je autre chose, fist li evesques. Vous savez que li roys de France guerroie au roy d’Engleterre; et savez que li chastiaus qui est plus la marche de aus dous, c’est la Rochelle en Poitou. Or vous vueil faire une demande: que se li roys vous avoit baillié la Rochelle à garder, qui est en la male marche, et il m’eust baillié le chastel de Montlheri à garder, qui est au cuer de France en et terre de pais, auquel li roys deveroît savoir meilleur grei en la fin de sa guerre, ou à vous qui averiés gardée la Rochelle sans perdre, ou à moy qui li averoie gardé le chastel de Montlhery sans perdre?”

En nom Dieu, sire, fist li maistres, à moy qui averoie gardée la Rochelle sans perdre.

49. ”— Maistre, dist li evesques, je vous di que mes

cuers est semblables au chastel de Montleheri; car nulle temptacion ne nulle doute je n’ai dou sacrement de l’autel. Pour laquel chose je con di que pour un grei que Diex me en sait de ce que je le croi fermement et en pais, nous en ault Diex quatre, pour ce que vous li gardes vostre cuer en la guerre de tribulacion, et aves si bone volenté envers li que vous pour nulle riens terrienne, ne pour meschief que on feist dou cors, ne le relenquiriés. Dont je vous di que soiés touz aises; que vostre estas plait miex à Nostre Signour en ces cas, que ne fait li miens.” When the master heard this, he knelt before the bishop, and held himself well paid.

§ 226. — If therefore one means to say that we are in a certain sense, that a wave, that a great wave of incredulity has passed, that was not known, that was certainly perhaps not suspected in the anterior times, that we are in a certain sense in and under a certain reign of incredulity, one is right to say it, one even has the right and the duty to say it. But one is only enunciating a great historical fact, a general historical fact, rather gross, on which there is not and cannot be any hesitation, not the slightest discussion.

§ 227. — A wave has passed; everyone is agreed on this point. How long will it remain at slack; no one knows. But if one means to say that it has submerged everything, (which is what M. Laudet means, what M. Laudet says), in the sense that it would have invaded the very nature of our faith, it is then that one falls, (as M. Laudet

falls into it), both into the heresy of history and into the heresy of faith.

§ 228. — A great wave has passed. It is a great fact, historical, a gross gross fact, social. That this wave has submerged everything in extension, in extent, in geography, that is what no one would think of upholding. Whole sections of Christianity, of Christendom are standing at the four corners of the earth, (yes, M. Laudet, yes, I know, the earth is round, I too have been to school), old stumps bud, and flower and shoot and put forth leaves and bear fruit everywhere.

§ 229. — That a new historical status, that a new social status has resulted from it for the Church, for Christianity, for Christendom, for every Christian, not only is what no one contests, but it is what we have just considered ourselves, and it is, we have seen, perhaps that of which every Christian at bottom glories, can and must glory.

§ 230. — That there is in this a sagging of the Church, of Christianity, of Christendom, of the Christian, as M. Laudet would have it, we have seen that it is a first heresy, a heresy of history and a heresy of faith.

§ 231. — It is not only in faith, it is of history that our modern fidelities, — Christian bathing in the modern world, — have received, have obtained an exaltation on the contrary, a nourishment,

a perpetual sharpening. A new status. Our fidelities, our constancies, our beliefs, our faiths are also themselves, themselves always, fidelities of tribulation. We too, we all, we always li gardons nos cœurs en la guerre de tribulacion. Our fidelities are in all the full literal force of the beautiful Latin word fidelities of obsession.

§ 232. — Where M. Laudet has seen a sagging, history and together faith can see only an exaltation. Nothing is so beautiful as a fidelity in trial, nothing is so beautiful as courage in solitude, nothing is so beautiful as this kind of temporal eternity, nothing is so beautiful, nothing is so great as he to whom the post of solitude is entrusted. But if one goes so far as to say what M. Laudet says, that this wave would have so to speak invaded the interior of Christendom, that it would have literally flooded, submerged, invaded the inside of the Church, the inside of Christianity, the inside of Christendom, the inside of the Christian, that it would have invaded, altered the inside of our faith in such a way that there would be reason to distinguish, and even to oppose, M. Laudet, ages of faith and ages which, M. Laudet, no doubt would not be of faith, and so in such a way that there would be reason to distinguish, and even to oppose, M. Laudet, a faith that would be naive and of candor, (that of Joan of Arc and of the “fifteenth”), and a faith, (M. Laudet, ours, yours) that would not be naive and of candor, on this point reassure yourself, M. Laudet, we are in a position to reassure you; we prefer to

tell it to you right away: we are as stupid as Saint Augustine and as Saint Paul, as Saint Louis and Saint Francis, and as Joan of Arc, and why not say it, as Pascal and as Corneille.

§ 233. — This idea, this proposition that there would be in a Christianity, a Christendom, a faith, a Christian and consequently a Church naive and of candor and that then and that today there would be another Christianity, another Christendom, another faith, another Christian and consequently another Church that would not be naive and that would not be of candor is one of the largest heresies, one of the grossest heretical propositions, one of the grossest heresies both historical and of faith, both of history and of faith that one can write, teach. This second heresy, M. Laudet writes it, teaches it.

§ 234. — The Church is one, M. Laudet, identical to itself, the same to itself, eadem sibi, eadem ipsi, identically the same, historically one, chronologically one, temporally eternal. The communion is one, identical to itself, the same to itself, identically the same, historically the same, historically one, chronologically the same, chronologically one, temporally eternal. The faith is one. You must renounce this idea that there would have been a Christianity, a communion, a Christendom, a Church of imbeciles terrible or charming, and that then, and that today there would be only a shameful Christendom of extremely intelligent people like you. On this point

reassure yourself, M. Laudet. The Church, which is one in all senses, is one also in time. You who are ashamed of your God and who tremble that your faith may appear ridiculous, you are not of Christendom. We who are of Christendom we are naive and of candor.

§ 235. — Placed in this new status, historical, social, that we have no thought of denying, on the contrary, by which we would perhaps have reason to glorify ourselves if one means in addition what M. Laudet means, what M. Laudet writes, what M. Laudet teaches, that we are other within, that we are altered interiorly, that the Church is other within, that the communion, that Christianity, that the faith, that Christendom is other within, that there is another sort of Christendom, a new sort, a sort that would be the modern sort, it is then that one commits in full, in its full, this second gross heresy which is together a heresy of history and a heresy of faith.

§ 236. — Situated in this new status, historical, social, in this new climate, in this new world, in this new geography when one says modern Christianity, modern Christendom one means, one says the same Christianity, the same Christendom, the Christian Christianity, the Christian Christendom, the same within, the same absolutely, the same internal traversing the modern period, passing through this modern age, bathing in this modern world. When one

says modern Christian one means, one says the same Christian within, the same absolutely, the same internal traversing the modern period, passing through this modern age, bathing in the modern world.

§ 237. — The same within, M. Laudet. The same faith. The humblest priest in the last of the French parishes gives, (it was a humble church with a flattened arch,

the church we entered),

the last of the faithful in the humblest of the French parishes receives the same body of Jesus, corpus Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, that Saint Augustine and Saint Paul, (Saint Aignan, Saint Loup, Saint Gratien), (Saint Geneviève), (Saint Germain), Saint Louis and Saint Francis, Joan of Arc, Pascal, Corneille gave and received, gave or received. The same body absolutely identically the same. Temporally eternally the same and eternally eternally the same. The same in temporal eternity and in eternal eternity. Every Christian who prays, M. Laudet, secundum verbum orationis, every unfortunate man who says his Our Father makes a direct, immediate, instantaneous reference to Jesus who pronounced it for the first time. He imitates, he seizes, he attains directly Jesus praying, as in communion he seizes directly the body of Jesus. In this marvelous cortege of prayer it is always Jesus Christ who walks in front and every man who walks after is always eternally the second.

§ 238. — M. Laudet must get used to this

idea that we make no progress. It is the moderns who make progress. That we are stupid once and for all. That we are as stupid as Saint John Chrysostom.

§ 239. — Humanly even there is in this proposition of M. Laudet an ignorance, a lack, what one would almost be tempted to name a human heresy, that is to say a heresy in matter of humanity, of knowledge and history of humanity. M. Laudet seems to believe that humanity, in itself, that man would have less need of God and of Jesus than in the “fifteenth.” Does he believe then, this happy man, that the baseness, that the misery, that the distress of man has become less. Has he therefore never heard speak, has he therefore never heard say, even by laymen, even by laymen, even by historians, even by moderns, even (in the sense and) from the purely human point of view that the misery of modern man, that the distress of the modern world is one of the deepest that history, (even purely human), has ever had to register. Does he believe then, this rare genius, that humanity has become less sorrowful. Does he believe that the heart has been changed. That the human heart has been perfected. Does he believe that the father who sees his sick child suffers less than in the “fifteenth.” That he has less need of prayer and of the sacraments. Does he believe that the man who dies dies less than in the “fifteenth” and that the man who ages aged less than in the “fifteenth” and that humanity no longer has the same capacity as in the “fifteenth” for distress and for what they call

neurasthenia. One recognizes well there the incurable frivolity of the fat French bourgeois. The same capacity for void and for hollow and for absence. The same deficiencies, the same lacks. Does he believe then, this fat capitalist, and to keep to this one example, to this one case, does he believe then that anxiety about daily bread has diminished in the world and that there are not as many men as in the “fifteenth” who tremble for hunger, who tremble for the bread of their wife and their children and that they tremble less and that when we ask for the bread of each day, and that we ask for it today, we ask for it with a lesser heart than in the “fifteenth.”

§ 240. — Also neither the form nor the matter of the sacraments has varied, has diminished by an atom; neither the form, nor the matter, nor the object, nor the mode, nor the surface of application, nor the directness, nor the content nor so to speak the container of belief; nothing of faith; nor so to speak the form nor the matter of prayer.

§ 241. — Not an atom has varied, not an atom has disappeared, nor in anything has either what we believe, nor how we believe it, nor in what we believe it, nor in whom we believe it, who being; qui credamus. We suffer no perfectionings; at least of theirs.

§ 242. — “to remake oneself a soul of the fifteenth,” one sees the little boy who wants right away to talk like the

grown-ups. Who tries right away to borrow the jargon. To remake oneself a soul of this, a soul of that, where has this psychological-literary cliché not been seen dragging, this false elegance in Sunday best, this stroke of the pen, this slush. This false elegance up-to-date, in the current. And above all this “fifteenth,” “a soul of the fifteenth.” One must not say “the fifteenth century.” That would be too heavy. It is we imbeciles who say quite simply “the fourteenth century,” “the fifteenth century”; that is to say who quite stupidly use the word century, (which is a common noun, or finally barely a proper noun), making it preceded each time as if by chance by the ordinal number we need. How clumsy that is, how peasant-like. What is elegant, what is familiar, is to say the fifteenth, plain. So that one sees that he sleeps with, the fifteenth. And it is not with the fifteenth arrondissement. He is like the tourist on high, who knows not a word of Italian, nor a word of Italy either; and who at Modane begins to speak quattrocento.

§ 243. — One day Brunetière was receiving a lady who had brought him some copy. Even at the Revue des Deux Mondes the ladies sometimes bring some copy. — Madame, said Brunetière, I cannot unfortunately publish your novel. And yet it is pure sixteenth. — What then, sir, said the lady, would I have this happiness, that my work, that my style would be a style of that great sixteenth century. — Madame, said Brunetière, I meant to say of the sixteenth arrondissement.

§ 244. — “Who does not see, says M. Laudet, even if he is poorly instructed, like me, in the mystical authors,”… (He is always Péguy). M. Laudet you are poorly instructed in the mystical authors. You say it. That is your affair. We others are not poorly instructed in them, because we are not instructed in them at all. For us Christians the mystical books, beginning with the Gospels, going back to the Bible, and counting in them the Trials of Joan of Arc, are books of nourishment, in no way authors in whom one is instructed, documents with which one surrounds oneself.

§ 245. — “that it is rash to suppose”… It is not at all for us a question of supposition or of artifice. Nor of arbitrariness. Nor of gratuitousness.

§ 246. — “No doubt, writes M. Laudet, all visions are transpositions;”… This is again here a heresy, the most formally heretical proposition. Visions, M. Laudet, are in no way transpositions. Do you know what they are? Well, they are visions. They are communications, communions, direct seizures. It is even this and in this that they are visions. It is the other languages that God speaks to his creature that are less visions or that are not visions, that are, more or less, transpositions, up to the limit at this proposition which has so much grandeur and which one finds in the philosophers, that creation itself is a language that God speaks to his creature.

§ 247. — “and the mystics willingly accommodate themselves sometimes to the most brutal realism.” — What is this jargon of realism. And it is not a question of knowing to what the mystics accommodate themselves or do not accommodate themselves. It is not a question for the mystics of accommodating themselves or of not accommodating themselves. The mystics do not have to accommodate themselves or not to accommodate themselves. One does not generally ask them their opinion. The mystics have to receive, the mystics receive direct visions precisely, orders, commandments, voices.

§ 248. — “But Péguy lets too much appear what this direct vision of the mysteries of Golgotha”… a moment ago all visions were transpositions. At present it is a direct vision. What incoherence, what wavering; what perpetual sagging of thought, if one may say so.

§ 249. — “presupposes of critical reason, of reasoning reason, ambitious to understand, to explain itself, to represent itself to itself;” — It is always the same retort. M. Laudet had to reproach, to incriminate M. Péguy with intellectualism.

§ 250. — “the same, precisely, which, when our century wants to be fervent,”… it is always this same idea, this same heresy, this same prohibition, (in what tone), to our century of being fervent. In this tone of unbearable commandment and above all on this gratuitously, arbitrarily granted hypothesis, in this

tone still more unbearable that one well knows it, that it is understood, that it goes without saying, that it is settled. It is always this injunction, this proposition so formally heretical of forbidding to our century to be what M. Laudet names fervent and which means quite simply Christian. It is this injunction, this high commandment, this proposition so formally heretical of forbidding our century to be Christian like the others. This proposition that we would no longer be in Christendom; that we would no longer be in the kingdom. That Jesus would no longer be of this time, (he who is of all times). That there would have been a cut, in Christendom, in Christianity. An absolute horizontal temporal cut. That we would not have the right to be Christians like our fathers. That Jesus in sum would not have come to save everyone, — (what a monstrous heresy), — but only certain centuries, a certain horizontal layer of time. That Jesus in sum would not be of all times. That with us literally he would not be at home. That in our world, in our time he would not be in a world of his, in a time of his. That it would be today, henceforth, finished with him, and for him. That we are not, that we are no longer Christians naturally, by an internal, natural, ordinary operation, but by one knows not what factitious blow, by one knows not what wager of an extraordinary artifice. This idea, this heresy, this proposition so formally heretical that when our century wants to be what M. Laudet names fervent and which means quite simply Christian, it would do something extraordinary, a

sort of undertaking of a wager of archaism, it would do one knows not what of artificial and false, it would do, it would undertake something which would not be of its right, of its nature, of its within, of its rule.

§ 251. — Must we tell you again, M. Laudet, must we tell you a last time our faith. Must we tell you a last time your catechism. That the Church is one in every sense of this word and notably in the centuries. That the Church has received eternal promises. That Jesus came to save everyone, and the later centuries as much as those of the earlier centuries. That all the centuries are of his kingdom and of the kingdom of his merits and of the kingdom of the grace of God. That all the centuries are his and that he is at home in all the centuries of time and in all the kingdoms of the earth. That all the centuries of all the times belong to him, and what is still infinitely more grave, infinitely new, what is the very mystery and the secret and the center of the Redemption, that he belongs to all the centuries of all the times. That there have been ages of faith which were ages of Christianity, centuries of Christendom, times of the new law, anni Domini, years of the time of God and the grace of God, anni gratiae Domini, where the uncontested faith received a kind of consecration, if one may say so, literally a solemn public celebration, and that there are ages of Christianity, centuries of Christendom, times of the new law, anni Domini, anni iidem ejusdem Domini, the same years of the

same God, years of the time of God and the grace of the same God, anni iidem ejusdem gratiae ejusdem Domini, the same years of the same grace of the same God where the same faith evidently contested evidently no longer receives the same consecration, the same solemn public celebration. And present centuries and modern centuries, — soaking in the modern world, — which at heart are the same, which within are integrally eternally the same, of the same faith, of the same God, of the same Jesus, of the reign of the same grace. Of the same time. Of the same era. Of the same eternity. Of the same temporal, eternal era. That it will always eternally be thus. Up to the judgment. That always eternally thus up to the judgment there will be of these same years. In a word that there is only one era. And it is the Christian era. And that there is only one Christian era. And that it begins for everyone, for all the centuries, at that birth of Christ that M. Laudet precisely wants to annul for us, to suppress for us, to retrench for us, to forbid us, at that birth of Christ that according to M. Laudet does not belong to us. (M. Laudet I would not wish to bother you, but after all you forbid us as private this Nativity, the point of departure of the chronology of twenty great peoples). Post Christum natum and eternally it will have begun there and eternally it will be to end at the judgment. So that when our century wants to be fervent, M. Laudet, that is to say Christian, well it does the same thing as its little comrades.

It does in one sense, and as Pascal wanted, what is most ordinary. Most simple. Least new.

It is the grace of grace so to speak that it is together infinitely new and infinitely antique, that all it does is infinitely new and infinitely antique.

§ 252. — “ends up at the ‘documentary’ illustrations of the Gospel of a James Tissot,”… earlier he reproached us, he reproached M. Péguy with not having surrounded himself with documents. He reproaches us at present with ending up at “the ‘documentary’ illustrations of the Gospel of a James Tissot.” What incoherence, in thought, so to speak, in the very terms. Decidedly it is he, not the saints, who is a bit mad.

And this reference of Péguy to Tissot and of the Mysteries to the Gospels, how well found that is.

It is true that in a note, in a note where there is immediately a grossness, he is very well warned that he is here running the risk of misunderstanding. Reassure yourself, M. Laudet, it is long since you no longer run it.

§ 253. — “to Loisyist exegesis.” — It is the same argument, the same retort, the same denunciation of modernism. To reproach Péguy with Loisyism, one would almost dare to say that is rather joyous. Rather successful.

§ 254. — “Always this false naïveté, this informed

naïveté…” Always this injunction, this prohibition that he makes us against being Christians. Of being the same naïve people as the Christians of the same earlier temporal centuries. And always this informed, this information.

§ 255. — “One does not begin again. (It is he who underlines). One does not begin again. How many times must it be repeated.” — (Literary allegations follow). — The whole debate is there, M. Laudet, the whole center of the heresy is there and you have precisely found the formula. One does not begin again, you say; and you underline it. Well yes, M. Laudet, one begins again. And one begins again, even all the time. One begins again even always. One begins again even eternally. It is only after the judgment that one will not begin again. Up till then one begins again all the time. One does nothing but that, beginning again. It is even that which is the life of Christendom. Prayer, sir, begins again all the time, the sacrament begins again all the time. Temporal birth and death itself begin again all the time. (And the family and the race, temporal, and ploughing and sowing). Temptation, unfortunately sin begins again all the time. All the time every day prayer begins again to ask God for the bread of each day. The sacrifice of the Mass begins again all the time the Sacrifice of the Cross.

His body, his same body, hangs on the same cross; His eyes, his same eyes, tremble with the same tears;

His blood, his same blood, bleeds from the same wounds; His heart, his same heart, bleeds with the same love.

There is an internal Christendom, an internal Christian which always the same begins again all the time.

§ 256. — “D’Annunzio, he writes, yet capable of miracles,”… — What disorder of mores reached even into language itself. What taste, what will to speak improperly, to mistake one’s register, what obstinacy in wanting, in condemning oneself to speak improperly, than to write, in an article that is after all in matter of faith, that M. d’Annunzio is capable of miracles.

§ 257. — Nothing remained for M. Laudet but to conclude on a defamation that entered into the category of denunciation. He did not fail to do so. “He wanted, he says of M. Péguy, he wanted to dispense with ritual and ceremonial;” — (so it is M. Péguy who wanted to dispense with ritual and ceremonial; and no doubt it is M. Laudet who did not wish to dispense with them and who observed them and who respected them. In this macaronic language where M. d’Annunzio is capable of miracles, M. Péguy becomes someone who “sang the office all wrong, as a clumsy and somewhat argumentative priest.” One senses everything there is not only of falseness, that we know, but of cavalier, but of impious, but of offensive for the liturgy and literally of ill-bred in these last remarks.

Cahiers de la Quinzaine. — Tuesday August first, 1911. — § 258. — It is true that our fidelities are no longer the deep grain. They have become the blue thistle of the sands. — Now that my time wanes like a torch,

And I think, listening to the bitter wind groan, And the wave at its most impassable; Summer laughs, and one sees on the edge of the sea The blue thistle of the sands flower.

§ 259. — He has therefore never heard say, he is totally ignorant of this expression: the Holy Family; a Holy Family. It is a ready-made expression, a habitual expression, to which one no longer even pays attention. If one decomposed it however, if one returned to its origin, to its point of formation, what a singular drawing-together of two words. That the family, that the simple family, (that the private consequently), should have been to this point consecrated sacred, consecrated holy, soldered sacred, that it should have been thus sacred sacred, that is what one does not consider, that is what one generally does not think enough about.

§ 260. — Our fidelities are fidelities in squalls.

§ 261. — Rochereau in Belfort and Masséna in Genoa. — Why be silent also about those great besieged ones, those great generals, Loup in Troyes, Aignan in Orléans, Geneviève in Paris.

Joan of Arc in Compiègne, Augustine in Hippo.

And that great Besieged One, that great General with the innumerable heads, (if only there had been one), the People of Paris.

§ 262. — What ignorance no longer of Christendom, that is understood, but of humanity itself, of the simplest humanity. As if the price of misfortune had diminished since the “fifteenth.” This unfortunate man therefore has no life of his own. He has therefore received the confidences of no family, of no being. He let himself be taken in by this mask of stoicism that we all wear, which in all covers the deepest distresses. As if there were less misfortune on the stock exchange.

§ 263. — A letter in the humorous genre from M. Salomon Reinach to M. Lotte about this communiqué of the Bulletin very opportunely reminds me that I am very behind in my correspondence with M. Salomon Reinach. We had left off at Bernard-Lazare. It is not without a pang, without a tightening of the heart that far from these miserable arguments of M. Laudet I climb back abruptly to the high memory we have kept of our great friend Bernard-Lazare. A few days after Notre Jeunesse M. Salomon Reinach wrote me a letter to which I subscribe almost entirely. Let us fix this point of history. I have said, and I maintain, that Bernard-Lazare in the triumph or rather

immediately after the political triumph of a certain Dreyfusist political party immediately installed in the triumph of the Dreyfus affair itself was in a few weeks abandoned, disowned by the Dreyfusist political General Staff as instantaneously constituted because he became embarrassing, because he remained faithful to a first, to an ancient, to the original Dreyfusist mystique firstly instituted. I said it, and shall I not maintain it when all this is today acquired, universally recognized. This said, which is a thesis of general politics, of general history in general, if I may say so, and of general history of politics, it is also understood and I well know that Bernard-Lazare preserved until the last day, — (until that last day which came soon, which was coming, which was there), — in Israel a bundle not only of faithful friendships, but of proper fidelities, of faithful fidelities and of real fidelities, of fidelities not only of friendship (this is already the bottom of the man), but of properly religious fidelities, of fidelities of faith, of belief, of following, of accompaniment, of a total credit. It is Israel’s honor that this following, that this accompaniment, that this fidelity never failed the prophet. If therefore one means to say that up to his imminent last day, up to his last day which was there a handful of Jews, faithful ones, and not only friends, accompanied, embraced so to speak Bernard-Lazare and did not let him go even into death, not only do I consent to it, but I consent to it all the more willingly that it is exactly and totally what I said, and

that I am the first who said it. And even the only one, since there is only me who speaks of Bernard-Lazare. It is a point of history acquired and on which there is no need to come back. It is Israel’s honor that this kind of handful of men, of clasping, of embrace, that this kind of accompaniment never failed the prophet. I would be all the less founded to deny it or to be silent about it or to contest it that all this handful of men remained personally our friends, and in a sense our faithful. Yesterday again a new one, a quite young man came to see me, bringing me back precisely a small packet of letters that I was writing to Bernard-Lazare in those heroic times.

That if then and also one means to say that all around, more widely a certain number of Jews of a certain world kept to Bernard-Lazare until his death and even perpetually after a sort of social fidelity, of historical dedication, a material fidelity of a certain unshakable kind, a fidelity in short temporal, that is what no one contests, that is what I shall contest less than anyone, and that is again a very great honor of Israel to know generally very well how to settle these sorts of situations. Israel in this, and on many other points, could serve us as a model. We all know how Bernard-Lazare’s affairs were settled, how his situation was established. Until his death and to last perpetually after his death. This too is a point of history definitively acquired.

In other words, and in summary so to speak

geographically Bernard-Lazare was abandoned, for the reasons I have said, by an enormous General Staff of politicians equally Jewish and Christian. He was not abandoned either by a handful of mystical Jews or by a certain society of what I would readily call social Jews, — Jews not mystically nor ethnically but socially Jewish.

He was therefore not abandoned either in the first degree by a fervent handful, by a mystical handful, nor in the second degree by a wise society, by a social society.

That if then M. Salomon Reinach claims to have been of this wise society, of this social society, and in this sense not to have abandoned Bernard-Lazare and to have been faithful to him until death and since and after and always not only shall I grant it to him but I am informed enough to be bound to put him quite at the head of this society. In this second sense we all know that M. Salomon Reinach has remained socially faithful to Bernard-Lazare, that he has remained socially very close to the heart and memory of Bernard-Lazare.

But that if M. Salomon Reinach wished to slip, wished to promote himself from this second degree to the first, if he wished to pass from this society to that handful of the first, I would to my great regret be forced not to let him pass. M. Salomon Reinach was, constantly, has remained socially faithful to Bernard-Lazare, was,

constantly, has remained socially very close to Bernard-Lazare, in the preparation, in the battle, in the victory, in the defeat. But he was never of that ardent handful. Neither before, nor after, nor in the preparation, nor in the battle, nor in the victory nor in the defeat was he ever in the heart or the thought of Bernard-Lazare, because he was never in the heart or thought of anyone or of anything.

This is tiresome, one cannot chat, here already the big words are coming. I had reached this point in my correspondence with M. Salomon Reinach and I had not answered him, for twenty reasons of which one was that precisely I did not want to say big words to him. And besides I am quite old now to speak the bottom of my thought. The bottom of my thought is that M. Salomon Reinach understands nothing. Was I going to reveal this secret. I could not bring myself to it, when at last, leaving first, M. Salomon Reinach reminds himself to my benevolent attention by this letter, by this little note that he wrote to Lotte right after having read the communiqué of the Bulletin.

One must not take anything tragically. If I took seriously this little morning note, it would be full of the grossest insults to me and of the basest grossnesses and of an absolutely insufferable tone. M. Reinach (for example) begins by calling me there “the friend Péguy.” I do not like, that one calls me the friend Péguy. Nor do you. I am suspicious. I wonder what I have committed to deserve this familiarity. And besides in French the friend Péguy does not generally mean

Péguy the friend. On the contrary. So I would rather one said: the enemy Péguy. That way one would know what one means, and one would be perceptibly closer to the truth.

Am I going to take account of a note written in the rush of the pen, and on the spur of a communiqué. Am I going to torment my head about it. Have I even the right to take cognizance of it, though the letter that the subscriber writes to his director of review is always a little in a certain sense a public letter and not only private and almost as a result a publishable letter. (Come, come, my poor M. Laudet, we shall not have peace today with this public, and this private, and this publishable). What increases my embarrassment, and at the same time, makes it fall, is that all these extreme insults and grossnesses are so to speak so visibly innocent and in some way benevolent and almost paternal or at least avuncular or finally amicable and comradely that I really remain very much embarrassed by them.

Let us put ourselves in M. Reinach’s place. When I began, as one says, when finally I was twenty years old, he was precisely the age I am today, he was advancing rapidly toward his forties. The Annuaire de l’Association Amicale de Secours des Anciens Élèves de l’École Normale Supérieure, (familiarly A. A. A S. A. E. E. N. S.) (my dear comrade, my dear comrade, (it is M. Salomon Reinach himself I dare to name thus), one has founded an amicable association of aid for former students of the École Normale Supérieure, that was good. My dear comrade

what would be better, will you join with me, we shall found the amicable association of aid for the (former) École Normale itself. It needs aid bloody badly, our old house; and perhaps that by working a great deal we would arrive at saving some relics of it from the politicianish hands, from the senile hands of M. Lavisse). This Annuaire therefore puts us, M. Reinach and me, at a distance of eighteen years in promotion. I am known to have counted in the promotion of 94, and M. Reinach in the promotion of 76. That makes perceptibly 18. Precocious as M. Reinach could have been and retarded child as I have always been, and though in his time one did not do military service, there can hardly be but a wavering of a few years between the ages of admission, of entry to the École. M. Reinach therefore was approaching his forties when we weighed anchor from our twenty years. I am to M. Reinach, (one will excuse this mathematical expression), as these quite young men who come today to see me are to me.

Now it is extremely difficult if not impossible for an aging generation, for an aging promotion to believe that the others are aging too. More precisely they are willing to see that their elders age, and they measure this aging in a so to speak geometric fashion, like surveyors, by their own advancement in grandeurs, in posts, in temporal authorities, in powers, but they do not wish to realize that the others, that their juniors, that the young, alas, that the following generations are progressing perceptibly with the same

speed. All the crises of family, fathers and sons, come from there. This man does not want to understand that this man too, his son, has become a man. And mothers are generally worse than fathers. Because women are still worse than men. All this crisis of the Sorbonne, which is so deep, (not the Sorbonne, the crisis), comes from this that a whole generation, which is reaching its sixties, does not want to understand that a whole generation, another, ours, is reaching its forties.

If this perpetual misunderstanding, perpetually furnished, perpetually renewed, occurs, unwinds regularly from generation to generation like a cascade of misunderstanding and non-understanding to the point that it is the very law of aging in the family, in the race, in the people, — in philosophy, in metaphysics, in morality, in an art, in a science, — what was it not bound to produce between the generation that preceded us and us, when one considers the degree of scientific self-sufficiency at which the generation that preceded us arrived. I do not believe that with any people at any time one has ever, one can find a generation, a promotion that has ever been so sure of itself, that has ever presented a metaphysics so impudently, so impunely as being a physics and as not being a metaphysics.

In consequence and as was natural I do not believe that with any people at any time there has ever been a generation that treated as hardly, as ungratefully, with such hatred, with such

fury, with such bitterness, so unfortunately the following generation as the generation that preceded us has treated us and treats us. It really is, it really has for us sentiments like those old ogresses of fairy tales who always wanted to devour the young queen on a coulis of little peas.

It is thus that the old Sorbonne has become a kind of ogress at the very moment when we asked only to surround it with the most filial respect. Let our elders not be mistaken about it, — and we ourselves it is time soon for us to begin not to forget it, — the young people, the good race, the healthy French race asks only to admire, it asks only to love, it asks only to respect, it asks only to be filial. Still one must not snub them, one must not treat them injuriously, one must not receive them with injurious words, with still more injurious silences. We do not want to be treated as suspects by elders who without us would not exist in a house that without us was being swept away fifteen years ago in the antisemitic storm. The young people, the good race, the healthy French race, the Frenchman also has a certain pride, a very lively sentiment of his dignity, an honor. He is as easy to discourage as to encourage. The least good treatment, the least friendship, the least spiritual paternity makes him a liege. An accumulation of bad treatments ends by making him a rebel.

We see it enough every time at the regiment we find “the men” again, our Frenchmen as

they are, freed from all the social servitudes, resharpened from all the social blunting. For man is never free except at the regiment. And we too we are never free except at the regiment. Outside the civil servitudes; outside the civil blunting. Sensitive to good procedure, sensitive to the bad; sensitive to the courteous word, sensitive to insult; following to the death the loved leader, the loved leader, the courteous leader, hating to the death the discourteous leader, the injurious leader, such is the Frenchman, such is the people, such are we. There was no crisis of the Sorbonne when a man like Gaston Paris, when a man like Brunetière, the one austere and gentle, the other austere and apparently hard and secretly tender did, and amply, their duty of elders toward a whole pleiad, toward a whole generation, toward a whole promotion. Installing precisely in the spiritual power by installing it in the temporal power precisely this generation, this party that today wants to close the doors behind it, that refuses to continue the movement, the tradition of the spiritual power and of the temporal power. Doubly guilty party, which wants behind it only spiritual and temporal slaves, which wants no more even pupils behind it, far from wanting free men there. Doubly guilty party, for this torch of tradition that it refuses to bequeath, that it refuses to pass on, quem tradere non vult, this torch of command, spiritual, temporal, this torch of high friendship, of eldership, of spiritual paternity, they had not invented, this torch, they had not lit themselves, lit first, they had borrowed it, they themselves had received it from

their elders, from their own seniors, from their spiritual fathers. It is precisely the generation installed by Paris and Brunetière, and which without Paris and Brunetière would be nothing, which plays the Bogeyman and Bluebeard with us, with the following generation. But perhaps we shall not let ourselves be eaten.

We shall not suffer to be treated as suspects by a few greenhorns, by a few skedaddlers in a Republic that owes us everything, that as a whole is only by us, that without us, without our solidity would have foundered fifteen years ago in the antisemitic storm. By a few skedaddlers who at the least appearance of danger fled to the New in Thebaid and trembled in their skin and went to bury themselves. As for me, let it be well known, personally I shall not endure that a Lavisse, all puffed up with annuities and pensions and salaries and honors, (in the plural, in the plural), all stuffed with prebends for having sowed around him disasters in the Republic and in the University, I shall not endure that a Lavisse, even if he were of twenty Academies, should come with impunity to make jests and grossnesses, even if they be Normalian, about the career of pains and worries, of work and distresses of all kinds that we have been providing for twenty years, in very great part precisely by the fault of the previous generation. He has said enough of it this year. He has done enough of it this year. He has been concerned enough with me this year. Let him begin again to be concerned with Louis XIV. Let this fat gravedigger lay his papal hand on some less recalcitrant corpse. Let him continue only to bury the École Normale. That is a great

crime, and a great corpse, and which will require much earth. If he came back to be concerned with me I warn him that the most pressing approaches would no longer prevent me from asking him for the only accounts, alas, that one could ever have thought of asking of him.

Such is the historical play of these two generations, the one that preceded us, which is reaching its sixties, and ours, which is reaching its forties. What this previous generation had received from its previous, it did not transmit it to (us), it did not translate it. And what we the following generation we are already transmitting to the following generation, to the generation that follows us, we have not received it. Thus the one that had received did not give and the one that has already given, that gives, has not received. Singular reversion, singular temporal mutuality, interrupted cascade. Thus the previous generation has been an absorbent generation, literally a cupidinous and avaricious generation, temporally, spiritually, which stifled, which kept for itself, what it had received. And we, our generation, we have been forced to be a creative generation, which must draw everything from ourselves, the temporal and the spiritual, which must create, draw from ourselves all that we have begun to transmit to our successors. Those who had been showered with goods absorbed everything, remained sterile. And we who had received nothing have found in ourselves a fecundity that came only from ourselves.

One will never know to what point the generation that preceded us, (I do not speak naturally, I

never speak of the poor people), (I speak only of the great lords of Politics and of the University, but I speak of them all with very rare exceptions), one will never know to what point this generation has been criminal by this cowardly defection, by this cowardly abandonment of its post, toward France and toward culture, toward the civic, toward letters, toward intelligence and the heart, toward all humanity. This too is a point of history, but unfortunately it will never be fully clarified. When the witnesses come, that is to say the following generations, our generation, our poor sacrificed generation will have already raised, will have already repaired so many disasters that the historical traces of this crime will already no longer be easily seizable. We alone can know all that we found of ruins and disasters when we arrived at the age of men. (Which proves once more that what they call historical truth can never be established integrally since it would be necessary for the historian, vir historicus, to be literally of all generations, that he should be contemporary of all times).

(And as in a bad generation everything is bad, it is notorious that this generation is also the one which in Christendom has given us so many bad Christians, so many shameful Christians, in the sense we have defined.

What I want to say, — and it would be the beginning of a conversation with M. Salomon Reinach, it would even be the beginning of any conversation that bore

on this matter, — prolegomena to any future metaphysics, — is that there is between the generation that precedes us and us a rupture such as there has perhaps never been between two generations that followed one another. And let no one tell us that it is the habit, that it is always so, that it is necessarily so. We have two witnesses, we have two (other) examples. The one before, the other after. First the connection of the generation illustrated by Paris and Brunetière precisely to the generation that precedes us. Second our own connection to the generation that follows us. To the new young people.

I beg M. Salomon Reinach’s pardon for having been thus led by a simple drawing-together purely geographic in time, if I may say so, to put alongside his name the name of M. Lavisse. It is evident that for the rest there can be nothing in common between these two men. M. Salomon Reinach does not have a New in Thebaid where he flees. Every time that nearly civil wars and almost more than civil have led this country to two fingers from the most extreme dangers, M. Salomon Reinach was there. Like us. Among us. He was present.

M. Salomon Reinach would perhaps stop me here. — What are you talking about generations, he would sincerely say to me. We, what you name the Intellectual Party, have we not also young people with us. Look again on the Annuaire. We have with us several of your young comrades.

M. Reinach, when an intellectual party, when a spiritual-temporal power disposes of the budget of the State, of all the posts of the State, — (of all the high posts and all the posts of Paris, leaving to the others the care of going to teach in supposedly ungrateful provinces), — when it disposes of all the favors, of all the advancement, of all the power, of all the money, of all the connections, — (notably of marriages, there would be a fine work to do on the acceleration of unions in the University over thirty years), — (before I was not there), — when one disposes of everything, humanity would have to have indeed changed in thirty years not to have with oneself a few dozen young people; — (and I add: when one disposes of the power to break the backs of a few others, of all those who would not march straight; this has been seen; this is seen; this will be seen).

Since M. Salomon Reinach is certainly for experimental methods, let him reopen the Annuaire, I too am for experience. Let him draw up the tables. Let him draw up the presences, the absences, the concomitant variations. Let him count, let him measure the careers that one makes, — (I mean political careers and university careers), — when one marches with the Intellectual Party, and those that one does not make when one does not march with it. The highest values of the various promotions relegated, left in the provinces, (the only philosopher who is in my promotion still in Bordeaux after a tour of the world and I think at least ten years of the best lycée teaching), and rascals of twenty-five years provided with

chairs, provided they teach there what they name sociology. Make the comparisons, M. Reinach, retrace the careers of all those who march with the Intellectual Party, and be astonished with me on the contrary that there are still a few free voices that rise.

For me when I look at what we are I find that we are still many. When I look at what is done with us, I find that we are still many. And that there must be not only in humanity but properly in this race a rare proper value, a proper taste for liberty, a rare proper valor for there still to be a few free voices that rise.

This race must have liberty pegged to its body.

Have I indeed the right to complain, have we even at present the right to complain. It appears that on the contrary we must be extremely joyous. Like them. The king is enjoying himself. That is at least what our comrade M. Rudler prescribes to me or has prescribed to me, and in what tone, in his Revue Critique des Livres Nouveaux.

Of all the comrades who figure in the Annuaire, dear M. Reinach, our comrade Rudler offers indeed one of the most striking examples of an unfortunate on whom fortune fastens. M. Rudler, (G. Rudler, Gontran, Gustave, Gaspard or Gaétan Rudler), is the type of the man who has no luck. His microscopic works on the history of French letters, — (or rather on the history of literature), — (French), — (for here

again one must distinguish), — have led him, — well yes, there are people who have no luck, — have led him to discover that our master, — (and his master), — finally that our common master M. Lanson was a man of extraordinary genius. What to do when by a stroke of enemy fortune one has discovered, one finds oneself abruptly the holder of so weighty a secret. Ah if M. Rudler had discovered, if his micrographic studies and researches had led him to discover that our common master M. Lanson was not entirely a man of extraordinary genius, oh then the way of duty was wholly indicated. Happy difficult duties. Makarioi, happy the austere duties. But behold. Put yourself a little in M. Rudler’s place. I do not say in his place as maître de conférences. The State perhaps would not want it. Do not laugh. There is nothing to joke about. M. Rudler, our comrade M. Rudler had not discovered that our common master M. Lanson was not entirely a man of extraordinary genius; he had precisely, as if by chance, he had precisely discovered on the contrary that our common master M. Lanson was a man of extraordinary genius. Truth above all. Ungrateful you who laugh, futile and frivolous, it is that you do not know how heavy such a secret weighs. For the Stoics, and M. Rudler is evidently a Stoic, easy duties are evidently the only ones that are difficult; only they count, only they embarrass; braving misfortunes would be nothing; we are in the habit; but braving fortunes. M. Rudler however did not hesitate. He took his courage in both hands. In

a burst of sincerity that has remained famous M. Rudler proclaimed before the astonished universe that our master M. Lanson is a man of extraordinary genius.

Today M. Rudler gives at the École Normale Supérieure a course, or courses, notably one on Hugo, that the students generally find bad.

What astonished the universe a little, was not to learn from the soft lips of M. Rudler that our master M. Lanson was a man of extraordinary genius. For some time the universe was expecting it. As they say, it was felt coming. What astonished the universe a little, was in a certain tone, were the very expressions that M. Rudler employed. In what terms he informed us of his discovery, the memory of it has remained universally present. Expressions one would scarcely use, would scarcely dare use for a Corneille or for a Pascal, for a Beethoven or for a Rembrandt, our comrade M. Rudler used quite liberally for our master M. Lanson. So that one wonders what one would say if there came a new Aeschylus or a new Pindar, a new Sophocles or a new Plato, a Virgil, a new Ronsard or a new du Bellay, a new Descartes and a new Corneille, a Pascal, a Racine, a Marivaux, a Lamartine and a Hugo, a Vigny, a Michelet. A Musset. Or rather one knows very well what would happen. The new one would be very badly received at the Sorbonne. I mean in all the Intellectual Party. It is at the École Normale that I have heard said, — (I must say it was not in conference), — it was at the beginning of the liquidation of the Dreyfus affair that I have

heard said at the École Normale, passing the threshold of the door, to enter: “I hope that now they are going to chuck all that out the window. They’re beginning to bore the s… out of us with Corneille and Racine.” The man who pronounced these memorable words was one of the two most permanent functionaries, the only permanent ones, of the house, one of the two who have not budged for twenty years, one of the two who wear out directors, sub-directors and maîtres de conférences, as they were called, as they are perhaps no longer called, one of the two who wear out the programs themselves, one of the two who wear out the “transformations.” He was then, he is still in the house the permanent delegate of Jaurèsism, the official representative of Jaurès in the house. There was then a strong party. There is no one left. There is only the director left. But he has him well. He was then the dominator and the automatic terrifier of M. Lavisse. He was then the secretary of M. Lavisse at the Revue de Paris. He terrified M. Lavisse every two days with big words, by these exquivialades — of which I have permitted myself to cite a text. At present in this text meant: At present that we have finished the Dreyfus affair; at present that we are going to be the masters; at present that these young people are going to continue to follow us. He meant that we young people were going to use our victory and our strength to demolish what is France itself.

Such words form youth. Our elders, our seniors are astonished that we have gone away from them, detached, that there is between them and us, between their generation and ours a rupture the deepest perhaps

that has ever been between two generations. Men whom we were most inclined to respect, to love, whom already we respected by provision, whom we loved in advance, men to whom we had given our heart, lips from which we awaited good words, encouragements, counsels, the legitimate lessons of an elder fraternal experience, we have never heard fall from them anything but insult and offense and ingratitude and bitterness and derision and envy. Now we are of the race of the French who do not endure offense.

Here are texts. Such words, such talk forms youth. It is again in this milieu of the École Normale, it is in this little world that does not believe itself nothing and which is not nothing that another memorable word was pronounced. It was pronounced by one of the masters of the house. — “This time, he said, we’ve got him, we shall have his skin.” — The skin in question was not if I may say an ordinary skin. It was a question of nothing less than the skin of Pascal. — What Pascal? — Pascal, well; not Paschal Grousset, of course; Blaise Pascal. It was at the threshold of that little conspiracy, of that little cabal that was hatched at the École Normale and in the milieu of the École Normale by a fellow named Mathieu or Matthieu to demonstrate that Pascal was the last of forgers and which has left no trace. Neither the cabal nor Mathieu. M. Lavisse naturally had lent the Revue de Paris for the perpetration of this attempt. When he saw that it was turning bad, a coward in crime itself, he dropped his accomplices and declared that he had not noticed that they were doing that.

Having therefore made this discovery that our master M. Lanson was a man of extraordinary genius, — (let us pity the young man who is the depositary of such a secret), — M. Rudler took it upon himself, undertook to divulge this secret and this discovery. In what terms we know, and these terms if I may say so have had so many echoes that M. Rudler himself perhaps will never forget them. Today M. Rudler is at the École Normale, he teaches at the École Normale. Is he there professor, adjunct-professor, chargé de cours, maître de conférences, (professor) substitute, charged with a supplementary, or complementary course, or some other title, that is what it will never be possible to know, our unfortunate École having undergone such upheavals that the devil would never recognize a substitute from a titular in it. Today M. Rudler has discovered that M. Lanson, M. Rudler has entered the École Normale. I do not say that this is the result of that. I too wish to see in this result a simple coincidence. Under the Third Republic there are no favors. Advancements are never granted but to merit. And there has never been a single exception. And everything is always exactly proportioned to merit, to the twentieth decimal. Notably in the University. And very notably in the High University. Influences have never served for anything, neither protections, nor connections, nor liaisons, nor compromises, nor alliances, nor the political and all the parliamentary. I am convinced that a young man who had had the misfortune to discover that our master M. Lanson does not write French would have had as fine a

university fortune as M. Rudler. There are no coteries in the University. Notably in the High University. There is no coterie at the Sorbonne that makes the advancements. Consequently M. Rudler is at the École Normale only by his sole merit.

I had therefore made, finally I had made to this sir our comrade Rudler a quite innocent jest, — (I know how to do it), — precisely about those terms in which he had spoken of M. Lanson. Thereupon M. Rudler felt the need to dedicate to me a mortal hatred. So far I see no inconvenience in it, nothing is worth a good enemy. Where I see an inconvenience, it is that M. Rudler, wishing to align for me a master-stroke of a hatchet job, (of a maître de conférences), conceals himself behind a certain little boy who signs I believe Pons Daumelas.

If I had someone facing me, if I had facing me M. Rudler I would say that this article is of the last baseness. Of the basest grossness. And I still know enough French, may it not displease M. Rudler, that, when I say baseness and grossness, I do not mean that an article is disagreeable to me, or that it is enemy to me, or hostile, infensus, or that I do not like it.

What is perhaps most remarkable in this remarkable piece is that M. Rudler or his pseudo-pomp reproaches me particularly with being whiny. So, which means that it appears that everything is going well, and

that it is we who invent that things are going badly. It is the autumn wind that makes one believe that currently there are crises. Everything is going well. Our masters are making the violins advance. Vibrate, trombone and chanterelle!

Let Magnan dance the trenis And Saint-Arnaud the pastourelle!

Everything is going well. There is no crisis of the Sorbonne, no question of the Sorbonne. It is an optical illusion. It is we who invented that, that there is a crisis of the Sorbonne, a question of the Sorbonne. No one notices that there is one. It is wireless telegraphy that has made people believe that there was a question of the Sorbonne. There is no crisis of teaching, of all the teachings. It is not visible. It is an invention of the wicked. There is no crisis of the University, of the three orders of teaching. And even of teaching outside. There is no crisis, there has not been a whole upheaval of the École Normale. It is a straw. It is a breath. It is nothing. It passes. It is thermodynamics that is the cause. M. Rudler is there. M. Rudler teaches there. How could it go badly. How could there be a crisis, when M. Rudler is there, when M. Rudler teaches there. M. Rudler is gay. M. Rudler is content. M. Rudler is there. M. Rudler is happy. M. Rudler teaches there. M. Rudler is not whiny. There has never been a crisis of the École Normale, a question of the École Normale. There is no crisis of Latin. It is the journalists who have invented that. There is no crisis

of Greek. There is no crisis of French. There is no crisis of culture in general. There is no crisis of the whole public mentality. There is no crisis in the lycées. There is no crisis in the Faculties. There is no crisis in all the university world and even in all the thinking world. How can you expect there to be a crisis, since M. Rudler teaches at the École Normale Supérieure.

The Intellectual Party itself is not whiny. No, but it has come in its thirst for domination, in its need for tyranny to such a degree of susceptibility, to such a point of supersensitivity, — (I do not say of supra-sensitivity, which proves that Latin in French is still a fine language), — that one can no longer even pronounce this word, these three syllables, the Sorbonne, without drawing on oneself at once from below to above obligatorily circumferential glances. That if you add that you know M. Massis and that he is a very honest man, at once one looks at you, one looks at you, — or rather one does not look at you, — as I would not like to be looked at. It was natural moreover that this affair, that an affair that came from the Intellectual Party and that interested the Intellectual Party, should end with taboo words. I know a house where one can no longer go, because if you say for example: There is a cab going up the rue de la Sorbonne, at this sole name, at this sole word Sorbonne everyone shrugs his shoulders and looks obstinately into the bottom of his glass. I mean, into the bottom of his cup.

The Intellectual Party is like all absolute powers, when the spirit of vertigo seizes them, the spirit of imprudence and error. They wish to receive no reform from within. They treat as enemies those who from within, long, lengthily, patiently want to make them hear the voice of reason, the voice of justice; the voice of liberty; the voice of justness. Let them not be astonished henceforth at receiving material attacks, and at receiving them from outside. It is the law.

It is the event of all tyrannies.

It will evidently be later also a great question in the history of literatures to know whether this Pons I no longer know how, Pons Daumelas also exists or whether it would not be a pseudonym of our M. Rudler. There is the for and the against. The scales of scientific methods hesitate, sag in oscillations of a marvelous tenuity. The two theses balance with prolongations of voluptuousness. (Always the muted voluptuousnesses of M. Rudler, if I remember rightly). What would lead me to believe that this article, quite low, would not be by M. Rudler, is that it is after all written in a certain French to which M. Rudler does not attain. But what would lead me to believe that it is a pseudonym, and not an onyme plain and simple nor even a préonyme, is that it is a name so evidently forged. Let us appeal, my children, no longer to our old instincts, nor to our taste, they are out of reign, but to those subtle rules our masters have instituted among us, Pons Domelas, Ponce Daumelas, I do

not know if you are like me, it is a name that smells of forgery. One will never make me believe that a real man is called that. It is a manufactured name, a bisecting name, a name so evidently composed, right down the middle, Pons Daumelas one sees at once that it is a little mitigated compromise between the famous Pontius Pilate and the almost as famous Domela Nieuwenhuis.

If still he were called Pierre Pons, strictly that could be natural. It is a misfortune, to be called Pierre Pons. Consequently it can happen to someone.

We all know the treasures of perfection there are in the following sentence: Madame, it’s me who I am the professor of French that they spoke to you of. One believed up to now not only that this was the sublime of the genre, but that one could never do better. One was mistaken. We today have the super-sublime of the genre. Someone has done better. Since the 15th of July. There is a sentence still superior. You would much like to know where. Since you are subscribed to the cahiers, I am going to tell you. There is a superior sentence, still superior precisely in this number 7, VIth year, (Second Series), 15 July 1911, of this Revue Critique des Livres Nouveaux, published at Cornély, 101, rue de Vaugirard. Price of the number, 0.60. Subscriptions 5 francs per year for France, and 6 francs for Abroad. I cannot too much thank M. Pontius Pilate for having drawn my attention to this number, in being so kind as to occupy himself there with my modest person. For if M. Domela Nieuwenhuis had not drawn my atten-

tion to this number, I would have been ignorant all my life of this extraordinary sentence, super-Scarlatti. And I would have lost much by it. And the universe also was ignorant of it all its life. And the universe also would have lost much by it. For the universe does not read the Revue Critique des Livres Nouveaux. It is wrong. But let us not anticipate.

Struck by my unworthiness, and to see that I did not know French, and that it was Cousin Pons who knew it, but in no way stubborn, you must do me this justice, I set myself forthwith to learning it, — (not the Pons, the French), — in this Revue which taught me so nicely that I did not know it. I avow that I went from surprise to surprise. If Cousin Médicis had not drawn my attention to this number, I was frustrated of great teachings. Cousin Pons is evidently from the country of M. Combes. It is a long time that I suspected this Revue Critique des Livres Nouveaux of being an organ, if I may say so, combiste. This Revue bears teachings even on its cover. Thus one sees there, on its cover, that cousin Rudler is represented there as Doctor of letters and as Professor at the Lycée Louis le Grand. He is not represented there as exercising some domination at the École Normale Supérieure. Would it be an error of my abused senses, that our comrade gives a course at the École Normale Supérieure, and bad lessons on Hugo. But let us open the review of cousin Pamela. The first lesson I take there is a fairly good lesson of classification. As little cousin as I am, I distinguish rather rapidly what this Revue is. It is a cousin Revue. I mean among cou-

sins. It is first, and excellently, it is in the first degree a review where those who do nothing speak ill of those who do something. But if by misfortune, — (or by error), — one of those who do nothing has had the misfortune to do something, then another of those who do nothing is delegated to say of the one who by misfortune has done something a good of which on one example we are about to have a slight idea. Thus the Revue becomes in the second degree a Revue of mutual censing. My God it is not the first time that is seen. In a word there are for these people those who are of the Revue, and those who are not of the Revue. Cousin Penelope is of the Revue, and I, Péguy, one realizes rather rapidly that I am not of the Revue. For each number of the Revue, if I am to believe the last page of the cover, is divided into three parts: 1° study on a recent work, or on a set of recent publications of the first order or of current interest; 2° ordinary reviews; 3° books announced summarily. One readily believes that I am in the ordinary reviews. They would have liked to put me in the books announced summarily, but they would not have had the room to wreck me. It took two pages and nine lines for cousin Babylas. The exceptional book, or to speak exactly the book of first order today is volume III of the Histoire de la langue française, des origines à 1900, by our master M. Brunot (attention, attention, one must here say our master and not go saying our cousin M. Brunot, the king is not his cousin). (And I would only half trust his joviality). It is therefore volume III of

M. Brunot which is the recent or current work. One could have fallen much worse. I have no competence in the History of the French language, but while waiting until I have acquired some competence in it, which cannot be slow in coming, I am full of respect for our master M. Brunot, I have for the works of M. Brunot, I a writer, all the respect that a soldier who has waged war has for a historian of powders and saltpeters, who has not waged it, all the respect that a painter, who has made paintings, has for a historian of the paint box, who has made none. But while waiting until I have acquired some competence in the History of the French language, I owe to M. Brunot from this very number a good teaching. For it is a cousin named Sudre or if you wish it is a fellow named cousin Sudre who was charged, or who took it upon himself to present the book of M. Brunot. You say, M. Reinach, or finally you will say to me that you have young people with you, that the Intellectual Party has young people with it. See what your young people are. Listen, since after all your collaborators, you too, at this Revue, and your name is in the little rectangle of the cover, in the little head cartouche, listen, instruct yourself with me, listen, let us learn how and to what extent these young people, yours, push the art of flattery, listen in what terms they speak of a patron. One would think oneself at the best days of the Faculty of Medicine. Cousin Sudre says all the good he thinks of the book of the patron. He has the right and it is not there that literary flattery begins. And university. But when he has finished cousin Sudre says to himself: That isn’t everything. Is the patron going to

be content. He does the patron this insult, that we would not do him, of supposing that the patron likes praise. And so cousin Sudre launches into a lyricism that is not from Château-Thierry. (M. le Grix was quite right to announce to us a renaissance of lyricism in France). Let us listen a little. Note that it is after the end of his article. His article is finished when he begins:

I have tried to indicate what in the work of M. Brunot is absolutely exceptional. I would not want these reviews, necessarily fragmentary, to create illusion about the admiration that the entire work inspires in me; (you would believe from that that the entire work does not inspire admiration in him. You are doubly mistaken, and about his psychology, where you are unforgivable, and second you are not there, one sees well that you do not know their French, second about his French.) admiration that will be shared (you are reassured at once) admiration that will be shared by all those who will read it or will have to consult it. (One will not say that these young people lack the sense of admiration). They will not in truth know what must be admired most, the colossal faculty for work of the author or his fine, healthy and useful erudition. But all will remain in agreement that this monument was lacking to the study, to the honor of our language, and that it is for a good and learned Frenchman to have raised it. (For these friends of Jaurès are also good Frenchmen when necessary).

They had wanted to make us believe that the old

gymnastics with apparatus had been replaced in the schools by Swedish gymnastics. We now know by what the old gymnastics with apparatus has been replaced in the schools. It has been there replaced by a judicious exercise, by a rational gymnastics of the handling of the censer. And by a few exercises of suppling.

We all knew the degree of high perfection the sentence of the professor of French that they spoke to you of attains. There was also a sentence of Patin that was famous when we were at the lycée. Both are no longer anything since this sentence that I see. It is in the ordinary reviews. One must pass to find it over the “ordinary” review that cousin Peloponnese reserved for me. After three or four reviews one arrives at the following sentence. I warn that despite the play of the first metaphors, it is not a question in this Revue Critique of marine geography nor of a treatise on obstetrics. It is a question of a book by a certain Cazamian on modern England. Here is the sentence: “He has attempted, and succeeded in, the synthesis of the English soul and history for a hundred years. No longer one of those psychological syntheses in the manner of Taine and his school, which are only classical portraits enlarged to the size of peoples, but a historical synthesis, in which an extensive knowledge of the facts sustains and nourishes the interpretation.” Here is the fine part of the sentence, and the metaphors: “He has avoided the principal pitfalls of his conception. Under the philosophical schema

it is easy even for readers moderately conversant with English things, to replace the drama, with its anguishes. But the schema itself creates no rigidity. The author does not freeze life in systematic constructions. Everywhere he gives to understand that there exist no pure tendencies, without mixture of contrary tendencies, and that a people cannot throw itself entirely on the side of the one or the other adaptation. Thanks to the nuanced and happy variety of his formulas, he has brought out the dominants, but respected the deep complexity of things. So, when one would discuss with him about dosages of reflection and reason, or even about the attaching of such-and-such a tendency to one or another of the adaptations, one would shake neither the whole of his construction nor his general idea, perfectly legitimate although applied retrospectively to the past century.”

Well there it is, I am ashamed to say it because it is so extraordinary one will not believe me: There it is: The man who writes that teaches French at the École Normale Supérieure. This sentence is by Rudler himself.

Charles Péguy

… “perfectly legitimate although applied retrospectively to the past century.” And if one applied it retrospectively to the future century, my dear comrade, would it still be perfectly legitimate, his

general idea. — And I do not speak, I no longer speak of the perpetual mutual censing.

One would not believe the testimony of one’s eyes. There are the recastings. There are the improvements. There are the perfectionings. No there is no crisis of French. It is a lure. The man who writes like that; the man who writes that; this jargon; this packet of clichés; this abstract slush; this insipid gathering of poverties; I cannot get over it; the man who writes that, (let us be gay, above all, let us not be whiny), the man who writes that teaches French at the École Normale Supérieure.

People say to me: Do not get excited. This Rudler is a mediocrity. He casts no shadow on anyone. That is why he made this rapid career. It is always thus in the Intellectual Party. — I answer: I know that it is always thus in the Intellectual Party, but I know also that it is by dint of not having wanted to get excited that we are where we are.

“He has avoided the principal pitfalls of his conception.” (Happily still that he has avoided the principal ones). Under the philosophical schema…” No, if anyone claims that the sentence of the professor of French or that the sentence of Patin has a higher perfection than the sentence of M. Rudler, I say that this someone must be an envier, a jealous one, an enemy of M. Rudler.

I well know that it is their theory, (and still more their practice, certainly), that one need not know how to write to be concerned with writers and writings, (and they

do not deprive themselves, of not knowing how to write), perhaps on the contrary, (they abuse a little of that contrary), that it is even better not to know how to write to be concerned with writers and writings, (one is less partial, no doubt), to do the history of writers and writings. But our thesis, ours writers, is that we have about the works and about the lives and in the works and in the lives of our models and our masters deep insights that non-writers do not have there. There will always be those who are of the trade and those who are not. Our thesis, ours writers, is that we have about the works and about the lives and in the works and in the lives of our elders and our fathers, of our models and our masters deep insights. I say that a Tharaud, because Tharaud is a writer, because Tharaud is a novelist, because Tharaud has just made La Maîtresse Servante, I say that a Tharaud, when he merely opens a novel of Flaubert, a novel of Maupassant, has, finds (without seeking), receives there instantaneous insights that a Rudler will never receive, that besides are not found, are not obtained. And in return our thesis is that there is a certain incapacity to write, a sort of certain uncleanness of writing that disables a man for men and for works of writing. That this does not deceive, that it is incurable, and that a man who has once committed a sentence like this sentence of M. Rudler, a verse of Racine or a verse of Ronsard will never ring in his head. After that he may have two hundred fifty-one thousand file cards. We don’t give a damn about

his file cards. We have had enough of these little dominators who claim to do the history of a reality without hearing into that reality. The man who plays in his metaphors like a tardigrade, the man who is a tardigrade will remain a tardigrade.

Same day, evening. — I quite realize all there is of low in noting all these basenesses, and the hatred and the envy and the filth and the shame. It is not without a sadness itself incurable and without a bitterness, it is not without a tightening of heart, without an anguish, without a discredit and discrediting of self, without a sentiment of debasement in one’s own eyes that one engages in conversation with these people. One has the sentiment of a great diminution. One never has the knowledge, in advance, of the ordeal. One never foresees what the ordeal will be, what it will be like. I thought I had the experience of life. I thought that my procession could unfold without affront; that it could unfold innocently before an innocent public; innocently as it was conceived; innocent before an innocent public, pure before a pure public. I was mistaken. But when some bad rogues come publicly to commit improprieties, one must indeed make a few halberdiers advance. I have made a few halberdiers advance. If I am asked, I shall make others advance, as many as are needed. I shall do every trade, as many as are needed. If they soil the street, I shall make myself street sweeper,

so that pure feet, so that clean feet may not be soiled.

I shall do every trade. I am in the habit. All I ask is that all this gall burst on these gall-laden men and that soon I may go back to work with a pure heart.

Twelve years ago, when the first cahier of the first series appeared, the Intellectual Party cried out. They laughed among themselves, they joked, they jeered. They have always been the party of derision. They mocked. They sneered. It is their strong suit. They said at the École Normale and in all that milieu of the École Normale: One has seen the first appear. One will never see the others appear. They laughed aloud in their fat pseudo-Bismarckian faces. One has seen the first appear. One will never see the second appear. They were lying. One has seen the second appear and a certain number of others since.

When the first Joan of Arc appeared, I mean the first mystery, the Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, the Intellectual Party said: One has seen the first appear. One will never see the second appear. They are lying. One will see the second appear and a certain number of others.

One will not see the second appear. They are not

so clever. They have never prevented anything. They can do us much harm. We have seen it. They can make us suffer much. We have seen it. We see it. But they will not prevent us from producing. There is in the producer’s race a force that conquers everything.

I was indeed ridiculous when the first cahier of the first series appeared. Without a sou, sick, (whiny as Rudler says), betrayed, abandoned on all sides I undertook to go back up together all the currents of base politicianish demagogy that came out everywhere like dirty waters to corrupt Dreyfusism, to profit from the Dreyfus affair. Today these demagogies, which are properly the same, which are properly the intellectual demagogies, have pulled themselves together. They want to attempt the same assault. They will find the same resistance. What we did, what we succeeded at when we were nothing, we shall perhaps still do today when we are something.

The calculation of the Intellectual Party was double, was a double revolution. They mounted that cabal at whose development we have been assisting for nearly a year. And so of two things one. Either I did not respond and they hoped to crush us under this cabal. Or I responded, I wasted my time responding, I did not work, and the second Joan of Arc did not appear all the same. This double calculation is

doubly foiled. I respond. And one must hope that the second Joan of Arc will appear all the same. They have not avoided the principal pitfalls of their conception.

M. Laudet has not avoided the principal pitfalls of his conception either. There is indeed a point, there must be a point that is well established, it is a point of method, it is that I know all too well my trade of man of action ever to let myself be hoodwinked, hoodwinked at the signature of some accomplice. It is not the first time that I am the object of an ambush. I am beginning to know. It is one of the first lessons I received from our master M. Sorel twelve fifteen years ago, in the days when I was beginning my second apprenticeship, (the only one that counts, the apprenticeship of the wickedness of others), and the Intellectual Party took it upon itself to train me. One must do it this justice, (to the Intellectual Party) that besides it was not doing it gratuitously. If you want to work in peace, M. Sorel said to me, (one supposes I wanted to work in peace), when you see, when you sense that someone is mounting a coup, a cabal on you, all those people are generally cowardly and sly, do not dally; do not let yourself be dallied with; in a review; do not let yourself be stopped at the one who signs the article. You understand. If they have him sign the article, that one, it is precisely because they think that having less volume he is the least vulnerable. Go straight to the head, to the author of the

cabal, to the director of the review, and bring him down. Afterwards they will leave you in peace.

I have constantly applied this method and I have always found it good. All we ask, we writers, we producers, I may perhaps say, is to work in peace. But if some bad rogue comes to make a racket in our workshop, and to want to sabotage our work, we can perhaps find vigor enough to take the intruder by the two shoulders and put him out the door. This vigor that we generally employ to work, by a magical operation, M. Laudet, we can transform a part of it, (we have a little patented transformer), into vigor of combat.

Let them leave us in peace, that is all we ask. Let them leave us alone. Let them leave us to work. But if they bother us, at least we shall make sure that they will not have bothered us for nothing. I followed this method ten years ago and we gained ten years of peace by it. Since I have been bothered this year, I shall follow this method in such a way that we shall gain ten new years of peace by it. I want a new decade. I am modest. I shall have it. What loses M. Laudet, is that he is too young. I mean to say too newly come into letters. If he knew the precedents, if he had known the stories of ten years ago, it is probable that he would have sought a victim

a little less recalcitrant. I well know that today M. Laudet would rather all this had not taken place. But since he has bothered me I can assure him, — (or assure him of it), — that he will not have bothered me for nothing.

It is this method that I applied ten years ago. It is this method that I have constantly held ready. It is this method that I shall apply this year. I know only the heads. I do not know Menelaus. Nor Penelope. I know Rudler and I know only Rudler. And if it is necessary I shall go higher than Rudler still, I shall reach higher, I shall go up to some communard head. I am always going up. I never go down. I do not know M. le Grix. Even if they made me lunch twenty-seven times with him, I do not know him, I do not want to know him. I know M. Laudet. I know only M. Laudet. I want to know only M. Laudet. Otherwise it would be too convenient. If M. le Grix claims his right to existence and all that follows, he will pass second. He will put himself behind his patron. As M. Sorel said to me when I was young, so I turn around and say it in my turn to every young man who would wish to found an institution, an enterprise, a house, a work and who naturally would at once be assailed by demagogic cabals. Strike at the head. It is not quite the saying of Caesar. Strike at the face. — No: feri vultum; rather: feri caput (strike not the face but the head). Strike at the head. And then do not go at it with a light hand. Do not fight for show. All that vigor which these young people deploy for thurifying, deploy it for crushing. All that courage which a Sudre deploys to maneuver the censer in front of M. Brunot’s nose, deploy it to break, on the same sorts of noses, other sorts of censers. (What renders the operation of the said Sudre altogether comical, is that when M. Brunot is led to speak of the said, he never fails to judge him thus: Ah yes, he says, Sudre, he is yet another of those necrophages. (One of those insects, in short, that live on cadavers). — And during this time the trembling Sudre says to himself: Will the boss at least find that I have paid him compliments enough in my paper.

Not that I do not distinguish between the two aggressions we have to repel simultaneously. When the Intellectual Party attacks us with that violence, and that bad faith, and that relentlessness, it does its duty so to speak, it does its trade, it does its office. It remains faithful to its own character. It takes up again a struggle that dates from more than ten years back, a new siege of Troy, longer than the siege of Troy, a struggle more than decennial, a struggle it has been losing for more than ten years. That is its business. We are at its orders.

But when M. Laudet, when the Revue hebdomadaire chooses, to throw itself upon us, exactly the same time that on the other hand the Intellectual Party takes to throw itself upon us, I have the right, I have the duty to say that this coincidence is extremely suspect.

Saturday August 12, 1911. — The proof that my method has its good side, and that often it forces the author, it forces the head to unmask itself, is that M. Laudet answers me today in his number 32, dated today, under this title: a disciple of Péguy. It is the moment to take up our paragraphs again.

I would say that my method is the one that makes the wolf come out of the wood, if the wolf had not since Vigny and even before been a noble animal.

§ 264. — At last I have someone in front of me. — “The Bulletin des Professeurs catholiques de l’Université (Bulletin of the Catholic Professors of the University),” writes M. Laudet, “of July 20, 1911, which appears at Coutances and which, on its own admission, has 190 subscribers, among whom thirty-three firm subscribers have not yet paid their subscription,…” — M. Laudet amuses himself greatly over this Bulletin which appears at Coutances, which on its own admission has 190 subscribers, among whom thirty-three firm subscribers have not yet paid their subscription. This is on page 271. He comes back to it on page 273: “on the other hand Péguy is not reduced to finding hospitality for his prose only at Coutances in the Bulletin des Professeurs catholiques de l’Université which has 190 subscribers, among whom 33 firm subscribers have not yet paid their subscription.” This doublet does not suffice him. He jeers. He jubilates. He is like Rudler. He too is not a whiner. He is fashioned in another way. He starts again on 278: “The journal that has published this poor literary letter, that is to say the Bulletin des Professeurs catholiques de l’Université, which has only 190 firm subscribers of whom 33 have not yet paid their subscription,…” One feels that he holds to it. He is fascinated by these 190 subscribers of whom 33. He is not a man who makes the same joke twice. He only makes it three times. He is not like me. He is not heavy in his jokes.

The subscribers to the Bulletin, (the 190 subscribers, myself too), know that Lotte makes it a duty, (considering himself only as a simple manager), to render account regularly to his subscribers of the situation of the Bulletin. I think he does it regularly in all his issues. In any case he did it in his issue 7, of July 20, 1911. He had to do it all the more in this issue inasmuch as this issue 7, of July 20, 1911, was the last issue of his school year, the issue that closed his year before his departure for the holidays. He must follow my announcement with a correspondence, as was needed to bring up to date the mail of the journal, and with a management note. I read in this management note, under the signature E.-J. L., which for all Coutances means Joseph Lotte, the following lines:

… “We count to this date:

Firm subscribers: 190 (among whom Mgr. the Archbishop of Avignon and Mgr. the Bishop of Évreux).

Possible subscribers: 611.

Total receipts: 1,002 fr. 45.

Total expenses: 1,211 fr. 10 (including of course the costs of producing and sending this exceptional issue).

N. B. — 33 firm subscribers of the first months have not yet paid their subscription. May they discharge themselves as of October.

E.-J. L.”

It is this management note that has had the gift of putting our cousin Laudet in a merry mood. At the very moment when the blunders of our cousin Le Grix were beginning to disquiet him, this management note suddenly cheered him up. It had the virtue of cheering him up. These firm subscribers and these possible subscribers, these 190 and these 611, and these 33, these fateful numbers, and these total receipts, — (small globe), — and these total expenses, these miserable receipts and these miserable expenses, all that seemed to M. Laudet of the last ridiculousness. Down to that sentence there is in the preceding paragraph, that attention for poor subscribers. One must see how the fellow laughs himself silly. He is gay and he is content, monsieur Laudet. His roof brightens and laughs with a thousand divine odors. One must see how he mocks these 190 firm subscribers, (it is true that in mocking these 190 firm subscribers in the parenthesis he also mocks, inside, Mgr. the Archbishop of Avignon and Mgr. the Bishop of Évreux, who are included there, but he does not notice, he is all to the joy).

It is this Lotte above all who appears to him an imbecile. What, here is a fellow who has a Catholic Bulletin, who writes for Catholics and he has not yet known how to draw incomes from them. He intends that his Bulletin should so to speak literally lead a Christian life. Catholic he has, he manages gratis a Christian Bulletin, a poor Bulletin. What scandal for M. Laudet. And he himself, Lotte, having, managing this Bulletin he quietly teaches his class at the lycée, he teaches the young citizens Latin, French, perhaps Greek, he continues, he plies his trade, he quietly teaches his sixième or his cinquième class at the lycée, unless it is his quatrième class, in short his grammar class. How one feels that M. Laudet despises such an imbecile.

1,002 fr. 45 — 1,211 fr. 10. — Evidently when one is M. Laudet, when one has twenty thousand, thirty thousand, forty thousand subscribers, (one never knows with the Reviews, except with Lotte’s Bulletin and the Cahiers de la Quinzaine and a few other little Reviews), twenty, thirty, forty thousand subscribers at twenty and thirty francs and no longer at six francs, when one is a big social power, when one has therefore a budget of four or five hundred thousand francs, and which perhaps passes the million, when one has a big social volume, how not to despise this budget of a thousand francs. M. Laudet is convinced that we are going to play the pot of clay against him who is going to play the pot of iron. That makes him laugh. He is right to know La Fontaine. That can serve much. But there is not only La Fontaine and his fables. There is an old story in quite another sort of fabulist. (And again perhaps not entirely so other than that, since this La Fontaine was a fanatic for one of these ancients). M. Laudet perhaps knows it. He will look it up in the book of Kings, book I, chapter XVII, verse 4, (they have been put into verses):

… “he was of Gath, & he was six cubits & a span high.

5. He had upon his head a helmet of brass; he was clad in a cuirass of scales, which weighed five thousand shekels of brass.

6. He had upon his thighs greaves of brass; & a buckler of brass covered his shoulders.

7. The shaft of his lance was as those great beams used by weavers; & the iron of his lance weighed six hundred shekels of iron: & his shield-bearer marched before him.”

M. Laudet knows the sequel. M. Laudet knows the end. M. Laudet will do well to follow the French version of “Monsieur le Maistre de Saci.” It has an admirable innocence.

While we are at it and while M. Laudet exercises his big-volume contempt, I urgently ask him to include me in this contempt where he encloses Lotte. One could not be in better company. And to include the cahiers in this contempt where he encloses the Bulletin. For the cahiers are, in their kind, a Review as poor, perhaps poorer than the Bulletin. This year as much as ever, monsieur Laudet, the cahiers oscillate from nine hundred to eleven hundred subscriptions.

§ 265. — Since M. Laudet absolutely wishes to assure existence to M. Le Grix, I consent. M. Le Grix perhaps will not gain by it. M. Laudet either. In this system and without engaging anything of the substance of the debate we shall name for good order article of M. Le Grix the one to which the announcement responds and article of M. Laudet the one to which I respond at this very moment.

“Whatever it may be,” says M. Laudet, “it is interesting, if only to defend the freedom of criticism, to set things right.”

M. Laudet knows very well that there is no question, in all this debate, of the freedom of criticism. The freedom of criticism is not in question. Even if I wished it, I do not see well how I would set about preventing M. Le Grix from writing at M. Laudet’s. Only if the freedom of criticism plays for M. Le Grix and for M. Laudet it also plays for me. M. Laudet and M. Le Grix all have the right to criticize my texts. But afterwards, when they have finished, or when they have finished beginning, or when they have finished beginning, I have indeed the right, in my turn, to consider, to treat their criticism as a text and to criticize it. There is no privilege of criticism. M. Laudet and M. Le Grix cannot prevent me from making myself a critic. I do not prevent them from making themselves writers. What does it mean, the freedom of criticism. I believe we are free, to criticize ourselves. Even if I wished it, the freedom of criticism is beyond my reach.

§ 266. — With his freedom of criticism M. Laudet diverts the debate. Or at last tries to divert it. I will bring M. Laudet back. I have accused, I accuse M. Laudet of attempting to operate an embezzlement of the faithful consciences. It is clear, (as the other one said). M. Laudet cannot ask me to remake here and perpetually my announcement. Let him learn to read a text. I can only confirm here, in much less good terms, what I have set down, what I have proved throughout my announcement: M. Laudet wishes to operate an embezzlement of the faithful consciences. He must, he wants to make literally a malversation, an abuse of spiritual confidence which in his thought may have, must have for him happy material consequences. I sum up. M. Laudet wishes to attempt the following operation, apparently spiritual, really temporal, if I may say so, in a certain proper sense of this word temporal. M. Laudet has many subscriptions, — (is that “defamation,” monsieur Laudet). — M. Laudet has a large bourgeois clientele. Rather liberal, as one says, that is to say generally rather Voltairean, Renanian by the inferior sides of Renan, in short un-Christian. I for my part see no sort of inconvenience in it. There must be Reviews for everybody and it is certainly not I who will say the contrary. Everybody must earn his living. By working. Everybody must live. Will it be defaming, monsieur Laudet, will it be committing a “defamation” to advance that M. Laudet must live; and with him and behind him that the Revue Hebdomadaire must live. M. Laudet would like to enlarge his business. I see no harm in that. I too would dearly like to enlarge mine. I have too much respect for commerce, and for industry, and for agriculture, to find fault with M. Laudet’s wishing to extend his affairs. He would dearly like to double his clientele. To his actual clientele, to his big bourgeois clientele called liberal, Voltairean, Renanian on the byways, — (I do not write the lower sides), — Combist in short and more or less un-Christian and anti-Christian he would like to adjoin a large Christian bourgeois clientele, — (so far as those words can go together, that is to say, I admit, very little or not at all, I confess). — It is here that the operation goes wrong. For the positions are taken in such a way, and for eternity, that he can only get there by deceiving, — (by trying to deceive), — the ones and the others. That is what I said, that is what I maintain, that is what I have set down, that is what I have proved throughout my announcement. M. Laudet cannot ask me to remake my announcement indefinitely. M. Laudet may do as he will. He is not the master of situations. His intention is laudable, commercially. — (It would perhaps be less so morally and in philosophy). — But he cannot satisfy both clienteles. He can only think of wishing to combine the two clienteles by having the intention of deceiving the one and the other. To the rationalists, — (as they call themselves), — he will never offer anything but an adulterated reason. To the Christians, — (we have just seen it), — he will never offer anything but an adulterated faith.

Whether M. Laudet wishes it or not, the world and reality do not yet lay themselves at the feet of M. Laudet. There are those who are Christians and for whom the Joan of Arc of M. Anatole France equals zero, — (and again certainly infinitely more dangerous than zero), — and there are those who are not Christians and for whom the Joan of Arc of M. Anatole France is everything. Reality is exhausted. M. Laudet would try in vain to dupe these two clienteles. He will be led to betray both, he will be forced to betray both.

I add at once that those who will always be the most betrayed, in this combination, in any combination of this nature and of this model, will always be the Catholics. We have seen it amply by this article of M. Le Grix. First, it is their habit. Next, it is a sort of law. When one makes such falsifications and sophistications of foodstuffs, when one makes such mixtures and, as our typesetters say, such pastiches of publics, it is always the faithful hearts who are contaminated, it is always the faithful hearts who are injured, who receive a blow. The impure always stains the pure, the pure, alas, does not purify the impure. We have well seen it by this article of M. Le Grix, where the operation did not consist in making the friends of M. Anatole France believe that the Joan of Arc of the Procès, that the Joan of Arc of our popular History of France, that the supernatural Joan of Arc, in short, that Saint Joan of Arc, was historical, but where naturally on the contrary it consisted in wishing to make Christians believe that the Vie de Jeanne d’Arc of M. Anatole France was a pious and lay exegesis.

I can only hold to the position that I exposed in the announcement and which on this point has always been mine. I can only confirm what I posited, and in much better terms, in the announcement. The beginning, or rather the pre-beginning of all conversation, of all discourse, of all war, — (that there is a first and a second loyalty of war), — of all entering even into matter, of all alliance, of all friendship, of all peace, is first that first each one be what he is, loyally, sincerely, clearly, seriously; that each one be properly what he is. To be. And as deeply as he can. Then one can talk. Then one can see. Then one can be. Then, but only then. He who makes confusions, contaminations and pastiches, mix-ups and overlappings, he who breaks the parentheses is not criminal only toward those whom he contaminates or causes to be contaminated. He is criminal toward everyone because he is criminal toward the whole system. He wounds the whole system. He prevents even the discourse, the conversation, the war, the peace, the existence, the being, everything. He adulterates not only those whom he adulterates. He adulterates together the friends and the enemies of those whom he adulterates and the third parties of those whom he adulterates and together the witnesses and together all the others. Everything.

§ 267. — This grievance seems to me infinitely grave and M. Laudet is perhaps wrong to regret that on this matter I made an announcement. This announcement on the contrary spared him some vivacities I would certainly have let pass in an ordinary article. This grievance, this first crimen, this first head of accusation is according to me so grave that what I wish to say at present has only an evidently secondary importance, is no more than a second-plane betrayal. The more so as I am more particularly its victim and a simple decency forbids me to insist too much upon it.

Here is what I am going to say. There is a first duplicity, a first betrayal of M. Laudet which is in my sense infinitely grave because it bears upon faith and in matter of faith and because it strikes at Christendom itself. There is a second duplicity, a second betrayal of M. Laudet, infinitely less grave, I admit, secondary, I admit, serious all the same, because it bears upon culture and because it strikes at our humanities.

Let M. Laudet not play the ignorant. Let him not make himself more ignorant than we are. M. Laudet knows very well that the year which has just ended ended on a fierce battle between the Intellectual Party and the rest of the nation. That these holidays are only a short truce. That the year which is about to open is already all hot in advance. That it only waits to open. That it asks only to open. That from its very principle, from its very beginning we shall witness, I mean that I hope indeed that we shall participate in the resumption, in the recommencement of this fierce struggle, barely interrupted. That one has rarely seen so much fierceness, so much passion, so much violence, so much resentment, so much hatred, — (which is unfortunately generally a good sign), — so much love. Spiritual. That once more France shows she is the great country, the native ground of spiritual battles, of spiritual hatreds, of spiritual revolutions. That bearing in particular on the question of Latin, and on the question of French, — (and on the question of Greek), — this great debate bears very deeply on all culture, at the deepest depth, and that it is culture itself that is at stake, as in the gravest hours of the dangers of culture’s being crushed by barbarism.

On the other hand let M. Laudet not play the ignorant. Let him not make himself more ignorant than we are. On the other hand M. Laudet knows very well that rightly or wrongly the Cahiers de la Quinzaine and I are or if one will are what is most exposed to the attacks, to the violences, to the perfidies, to the offenses, to the campaigns, to the cabals, to the ignominies, to all the blows of the Intellectual Party. In this great debate which sets on one side the Intellectual Party sworn for the spiritual and at once temporal domination of this people, over this people, and on the other side all the rest of the nation finally in revolt, rightly or wrongly the cahiers are what is most assailed, most violently, most underhandedly, most dangerously by the Intellectual Party. We are the fortress most assailed. It is against us that the Intellectual Party deploys, and folds back, its most virulent hatred, — (and it is competent at it, in hatred), — that hatred which all those who have not been in contact with the Intellectual Party do not know, all those who have not directly passed through it, that hatred which can only have its equal in certain ecclesiastical hatreds. We are the fortress most assailed. The most violently, the most underhandedly; the most dangerously, the most wickedly. We too, and on this ground, are at the extreme marches. It is a great honor for us, and one which imposes upon us great duties. Most dangerously, most wickedly, most hatefully we have just seen again by the blow of this Daumelas. Why the Intellectual Party is so furiously bent on our ruin, with so deep, so muffled, so tenacious a hatred, coming from so far, so profoundly sincere, there are twenty reasons it would be easy to develop. But it was, but it would be a historical work. We are its oldest and its firmest enemies. The oldest. These cahiers had barely been founded when already, alone, poor, naked we were undertaking to struggle against this Party which was preparing, both officially and underhandedly, — (the two can go together), — the lowering of a whole people, the mental, intellectual lowering, — (for, by a rather singular phenomenon, the Intellectual Party is the party of intellectual lowering itself, the party which is against intelligence), — the moral lowering and of heart and of spirit, the lowering of race itself. The Intellectual Party laughed much at it then. It made great game of it. We were nothing, and they had some immense boat. — The hour has come to pay. It seems that for some time they have been laughing much less.

Others have come. A great people has taken hold of itself again. That if the Intellectual Party considers us as its most dangerous enemy, it must know, it is a great honor it does us. In any case we are the one, or the ones, against whom they bear the greatest grudge. And they know how to bear grudges. There is a deep reason for it. It is that I have passed through their school. They have against me that infernal comrade-hatred, the basest invention there has ever been. Who knows, perhaps they had formed the senseless project of dragging me into their plot of domination, into their enterprise, into their pernicious enterprise of the lowering of a whole people. These great scholars knew characters badly. These great psychologists and sociologists had judged themselves strong in psychology. These masters did not know their pupils. These comrades did not know their comrades. These great scholars did not know men.

Let them not deceive themselves moreover. They have among the former pupils of our former School, — Scholae olim Normalis olim alumni (former students of the once Normal School), — only an infinitesimal minority. All secondary teaching is with us, over the few despised clients they keep there from class to class. Two thirds of Higher Teaching are with us, all that is more preoccupied with working than with coming to Paris.

There is not their strength. One cannot repeat it too often, their strength is not in teaching. Their strength is in a sort of extremely well organized masonry; their strength is a sort of governmental force at once official and occult. In a constant and underhand attention to monopolize, to usurp all they can of the government of the State. And not only of the State, but everything that is body, situation, position, temporal-spiritual establishment. But there their strength is immense, one cannot repeat it too often, and arranges cruel surprises for those who will not see it, or who will not see it all, who will not believe that it is immense. A recent example has harshly shown it. If there was a body that one believed had escaped the domination of the Intellectual Party, it was indeed the Académie Française. Now the Académie Française wished last year, in short in the course of the last school year, to found a great prize that would honor French letters, that would expressly mark the rank that letters should occupy in a society like ours. The Intellectual Party, ill-assembled, could not arrive in time to prevent the creation of the prize. It quickly rallied. Tyranny is always better organized than liberty. The Intellectual Party decided that the prize would not be awarded. It is well enough known that the Intellectual Party has no greater enemy than Letters: Greek Letters; Latin Letters; French Letters. The Intellectual Party resolved that the prize would not be awarded. It has not been. Two blows were thus successful. First one discredited Letters in their whole, as a body, one showed them incapable of receiving, of having attributed, awarded to them a prize expressly founded for them. Second one attempted to discredit the writer, whoever he might be, of whom the Académie might think for the attribution of this prize. Now this writer, it sufficed that he be a writer for him to be a born enemy of the Intellectual Party.

The proof is made. When I said to the newcomers: You do not know how powerful they are. I know them. For twenty years they have been upon me. Beware. — the children laughed, saying: He is an old man. He wants to make his campaigns count. He exaggerates the enemy. — Now they have seen. The proof is made. Or again one specified: You see them everywhere, one would say to me. Well yes, it is granted you that they are very strong at home. They are very strong in the Sorbonne. They are sovereign for making an appointment in Higher Teaching. Outside that one does not know them. They do not exist. They are nothing in the world. They are nothing in Paris. — The experiment is made, on a good example, — (have I still the right to say on an eminent example), — that they are nothing in the world. Today the proof is made, public. It sufficed that an order should come, borne by M. Lavisse. It sufficed that an order from the Intellectual Party should be brought, departed from the rue d’Ulm, for the Académie to bend, for a resolution, for an almost solemn vote, for an institution of the Académie to be abolished, to be null, to be void. For the will of the Académie to bend. In sum for the Académie to disavow itself.

All this is perhaps only misery, I admit, in comparison with the other operation I reproach to M. Laudet. I admit that matters of faith are infinitely grave and that any attempt at contamination of these matters is infinitely grave. But I believe also and on the other hand that matters of culture are grave, very grave, infinitely serious and that any attempt at contamination of culture is grave, very grave, infinitely serious. Now in assailing us at this date and in these terms, M. Laudet has committed against culture a betrayal of the same order, on another plane, and of the same form as the one he had committed against faith.

Whether M. Laudet wishes it or not, the positions are taken, the parties are engaged. There are not three armies hostile among themselves three on a battlefield. There are not three armies so hostile, thus defined that they fight, on the same battlefield, each against the two others together and separately. On a battlefield there is but one line of battle, sharp, and on either side one and another army. Enemies. In this sense and on this ground one is not enemy by three.

After this short truce of the holidays, which is not even a truce for everybody, as we see, a battle is about to recommence, one of the most ardent spiritual battles seen in a long time. There will be but one line of battle, sharp, and on either side one and another army. Enemies. On one side there will be the Intellectual Party and on the other all the rest of the nation. All the rest of a people finally awakened. The struggle is not unequal. Or if it is, it is so in the opposite sense of what one would say. For the Party is organized and the people is not mistrustful.

That being so, such being the situation I say that M. Laudet and the Revue hebdomadaire, in assailing us, ourselves, in this (same) form, which is exactly the form in which the Intellectual Party assails us; in these (same) terms, which are exactly the terms in which the Intellectual Party assails us; at this (same) date, which is exactly the date at which the Intellectual Party was preparing this new assault for us; we who are the most assailed by the enemy, the most beaten by the Intellectual Party, I say that in giving themselves precisely to this operation, in proceeding to and in assault, in this form, in these terms, at this date, M. Laudet has given himself to an extremely suspect operation.

I know how infinitely grave faith is. I know also that culture is infinitely serious. I hope moreover to show, in my dialogue of history and the carnal soul, that from culture to faith there is no, there is no kind of contrariety, but on the contrary deep affinity, deep kinship, deep nourishment of culture for faith, literally a vocation, a deep destination of culture for faith.

What M. Laudet does for faith: give pledges to the Infidels, whom he wishes to keep, at the very moment when he wishes to penetrate into the faithful clientele, to make himself a large faithful clientele, — (so far as all those three words can go together), — that same thing he does, this same operation he performs for culture. On the one hand he pretends to defend culture. It is the position he officially adopts. He is I think my own colleague on one of the committees of that excellent League which M. Richepin has just founded for French culture, for the defense of French, of Latin, and of Greek. At the same time he gives, with the other hand he gives pledges to the Intellectual Party. He takes the time when the Intellectual Party is going to assail me in order to assail me in the same form; in the same terms; on the same date. In doing which he gives the Intellectual Party certainly the most important pledge he could give it. The discriminating pledge. The one that counts. The only one perhaps that counts. The only one at bottom that the Intellectual Party held, and holds, to. The only one it has at heart. And that is at the bottom.

Leave me aside. Consider so to speak only the design and the form of the operation. I say that M. Le Grix may search in his dictionary, in all the languages of the world this beautiful operation has but one name, in all the languages of the world this clever operation is called a betrayal. It is perhaps very clever, but it is, but it is called a betrayal all the same. M. Laudet is doubly double. He betrays faith and he betrays culture. In two betrayals of the same form, symmetrical, or rather homothetic, pursued on two different planes whose relation we have begun to show. And since M. Laudet wants signatures, he sees that I write it here, under my signature and under my responsibility.

§ 268. — I am willing to march against the Intellectual Party. I have the habit. I even consent to march framed in against the Intellectual Party, although I have lost the habit of marching framed in. But while I march I do not want to be betrayed by my comrade of combat. I know too well what it is. I took the habit enough during the Dreyfus affair. I know, I have learned what it is to be betrayed by one’s General Staff and by one’s comrades in the line. That experience sufficed me for my whole life. I do not want to begin again. During the Dreyfus affair Jaurès stirred us on: Let us march fully against the anti-Semites, he cried. And while indeed we were marching fully against the anti-Semites, he and his acolytes, Jaurès and the acolytes of Jaurès had already begun to betray us from behind, had already begun to shoot us in the back. He had betrayed Bernard-Lazare himself. The negotiations had begun. A single experience suffices me. This experience has trained me for my whole life. I do not want to begin again with M. Laudet. I have funny ideas, — (if I am still permitted to speak thus); — I do not want my comrade in rank to shoot me. I have one ambition. I do not want one to shout, that M. Laudet shout at me: Let us march fully against the Intellectual Party, and while that goes on M. Laudet makes an occult alliance with the Intellectual Party, comes to an understanding behind my back with the Intellectual Party to shoot me in the back. If that is so, I much prefer to continue to march all alone against the Intellectual Party. I have the habit. For twenty years I have been marching all alone. It succeeds very well with me.

§ 269. — What is it, what does it mean, the freedom of criticism, their freedom of criticism. If the freedom of criticism is theirs, it is also mine. Then what. Is there a patent on criticism. Have I not the right to be in my turn, to make myself in my turn the critic of M. Le Grix and of M. Laudet.

§ 270. — Was it wished that, assailed on both sides at once, and on the two contrary sides, not only could I not work on the Joan of Arc, but again that I could not respond at once on both sides, to these two contrary aggressions. Unfortunately for them these high temperatures succeed admirably with me. As soon as the thermometer passes 35 in the shade, dear monsieur Laudet, I write so quickly that there is a margin-feeder uniquely occupied with receiving my copy.

§ 271. — But what am I doing speaking of a margin-feeder to M. Laudet. M. Laudet does not know what a margin-feeder is. This fine diplomat does he even know, has he even ever set foot in a printing-house.

§ 272. — In this sort of singular exchange of betrayal, in this counter-appointment, in this singular swinging of betrayal it is always the pure hearts that are most struck, that are so to speak frustrated. Not only the pure hearts of all the ones and of all the others of the parties, but moreover it is the faithful hearts that are frustrated. They always lose more. Contamination always takes place in the bad sense. On the plane of faith the Christians are frustrated. On the plane of culture the holders of culture are frustrated.

§ 273. — Total receipts: 1,002 fr. 45. — Total expenses: 1,211 fr. 10 (including of course the costs of producing and sending this exceptional issue). — I confess that this management note does not inspire in me the same sentiments of contempt it inspires in M. Laudet. — Firm subscribers, possible subscribers, — and firm subscribers of the first months who have not yet paid their subscription, it is not without a great tenderness that I find again these old friends. It is not without a great looking-back and without a certain melancholy. These beginnings of the Bulletin are so identical in spirit and in manners to the beginnings of the cahiers. This management note resembles so much so many management notes I have run through during the first years of the cahiers. It is so much the same tone, the same resonance of poverty, the same smallness of life, the same smallness, the same sincerity, the same purity of poverty. It is so much one of those notes such as I make from series to series, from year to year. These firm subscriptions and these soft subscribers, it is so much our old acquaintance. Our subscribers of the first hour, the few persons who can still have any of our so rare first and second series and some others have not forgotten, will easily find that it was always thus. They will see on our old covers, on the second, third and fourth pages of our old covers. M. Laudet will therefore permit me to ask him to put me, that is to say that he put me, that he include me with Lotte in the contempt he manifests for this sort of management notes.

§ 274. — This contempt is explained all the more in that it is not by such, by such small proceedings that M. Laudet conducts his bark. M. Laudet is an excellent businessman, — (is that defamation, monsieur Laudet). — M. Laudet is a big merchant, — (is that defamation), — (monsieur Laudet). — M. Laudet knows very well how to govern, M. Laudet knows very well how one governs a big affair. — (Is that defamation, monsieur Laudet). — M. Laudet has an excellent mercantile spirit. — (But it is necessary, in an affair, it is even very good, monsieur Laudet). — M. Laudet has in his Review many commercial advertisements. — I would wish he had ten times more. — M. Laudet must earn much money there. — I would wish he earned ten times more. — (Is that to wish you ill, monsieur Laudet, is that defamation). — M. Laudet conducts his affair very well. — (Is that defamation, monsieur Laudet). — If I were one of his backers I would be reassured. I would dearly like to be one of his backers. — (Have I good enough opinion of you, monsieur Laudet). — M. Laudet knows how one gains a big bourgeois clientele. He even knows how one tries to gain two. — M. Laudet makes savings on the little people, on his small staff, — (perhaps on M. Le Grix, — (I would be tempted to defend M. Le Grix against M. Laudet), — on his obscure collaborators, — (I do not say that for M. Le Grix, he is no longer obscure), — on the young people. — He is a hundred times right. That is how good houses are made. — He makes bridges of gold, he gives an enormous salary to the big literary signatures, he makes unknown writers, even if they have, M. Le Grix did, talent, work at famine prices. — Well yes, it is to compensate. And that is why Victor Hugo, who knew about bookseller affairs, and who often had to deal with him, — (on the side of the big signatures, of course), — still very often says of him, when he thinks of their old treaties. He has a rather good word, Hugo. Laudet, he said to me again quite recently,

He was generous,… although he was thrifty.

§ 275. — Some friends from the provinces, who know neither this Laudet nor this Le Grix write me: Is there not a great cruelty in thus passing through the rolling-mill two unfortunates whom nobody knows. — Let our friends be undeceived. These two unfortunates are not in fact very well known, but they are very powerful. M. Laudet is very powerful. Since he endorses today M. Le Grix, by this endorsement at today’s date M. Le Grix becomes very powerful. It is not in my habits to attack someone who is not powerful.

I almost some months ago, or some years, — (decidedly he is a man with whom I do not have the memory of dates), — let myself be engaged in a polemic with a publicist who was at the same time one of our subscribers and who had nearly become one of our collaborators. — (And, my God, life is so long, I do not answer that he may not become one some day). — I have reasons to believe I was right in the substance of that debate. Yet as soon as I knew that my adversary was not a power, I stopped the polemic short. I published in my very next issue and in full the response of my adversary, without a comment, without a word from me, thus giving myself, and quite gratuitously, all the appearances of being wrong. That is my only rule. Let one be reassured. M. Laudet is one of the biggest powers of Paris. It will perhaps not last always. It will perhaps not last long. But at present M. Laudet is one of the powers, one of the big powers of Paris. The man who can from one day to the next pay twenty thousand, thirty thousand francs to the masters of the novel to publish in his Review a single unpublished novel is always one of the very big powers of Paris. So is it easy to sense in M. Laudet’s article a certain astonishment. The astonishment of the man whom no one usually opposes, and who finds one, who finds one who opposes. He wonders a little, in his article, where this audacity comes to him from.

§ 276. — Let us come to persons. It will be quickly done. We must finish today. M. Laudet’s response is so hesitating, so fluctuating; and at the same time so dusty. It is at the same time so muddy. It is so discredited by comings and goings, by goings and returns, by takings-up-again, by regrets, by repentings and sometimes by remorses that this time I must summarize it myself and make a few propositions of it.

§ 277. — To give an idea, however, before beginning to establish these few propositions, of what I call the perpetual regrets of M. Laudet, — (and I take this word in the sense in which painters take it), — (and also writers), — here is how, here is in expressly what terms M. Laudet endorses M. Le Grix and the article of M. Le Grix without endorsing it while endorsing it: “And that is why it is I,” says M. Laudet, “who take up the pen, today, not to defend an article which I have approved without however having written or inspired a single treacherous word of it,…” — (Traître mot — a treacherous word — is a happy expression, monsieur Laudet). — (That is a found phrase. You are a rather good wedger). — That is what one calls cover and uncover. One may say that his left hand is unaware of what his right hand does not give. If it is in diplomacy that M. Laudet learned the art of formulas so happily balanced, of endorsements so cunningly compensated, of evasions so marvelously dosed, one must reinforce the fortune that, that M. Laudet no longer exercises these unquestionable talents in the diplomacy of the State, but only in the diplomacy of the Revue hebdomadaire. It is less dangerous for France.

§ 278. — First on the very existence of M. Le Grix. — M. Laudet knows very well why I did not wish to seize M. Le Grix in my announcement, why I wished to seize and did seize M. Laudet.

Firstly for a reason of general method I have at length set forth. I do not wish to have to do with sub-traces. One must always go to the head. One must always seize the chief.

Secondly because in this case and on this point I am forced to oppose the most formal denial both to M. Laudet and to M. Le Grix, — (and thus this rule of general method finds itself doubly justified in this particular case), — because this aggression of the Revue hebdomadaire not only was not invented, imagined, willed by M. Le Grix alone, but again was not only concerted, bound, prepared by M. Laudet alone united, bound to M. Le Grix. At the first degree the aggression of the Revue hebdomadaire is not from M. Le Grix alone. It is from M. Le Grix bound to M. Laudet and in this binding M. Laudet is evidently the head, has evidently the capital responsibility. At the second degree the aggression of the Revue hebdomadaire is not only from this couple, it is not only from M. Le Grix bound to M. Laudet, M. Le Grix some sort of secretary and M. Laudet director, head, responsible, it is I will not say from a whole world but from a whole certain milieu where this couple circulates, from a whole little milieu of fine society, — (and false society), — where this couple has some circulation. Thus the responsibility balances, distributes itself, polarizes itself thus: in this certain milieu this couple centralizes the affair, and in this couple M. Laudet centralizes the affair and the responsibility. In this certain little milieu it was a known affair, a current affair, in advance, a classed affair. Everyone knew that this blow was about to come out. Everyone was talking about it. M. Le Grix was promenading everywhere his ugly mug, saying with a sly air, the only one natural to him: I am doing an article on Péguy’s Joan of Arc. I don’t know whether he will be very content. — Today you know, monsieur Le Grix, whether I am very content. And it is perhaps you who are not very content with it, today.

I do not say, my impression even is that their principal idea, if I may say so, was to amuse themselves. In this certain little milieu. It is a band that would commit all crimes to amuse itself. Just as they would renege on God so as not to lend themselves to laughter, so as not to expose themselves to ridicule, so they would sell their father and mother to amuse themselves a little, in the sense in which they understand amusing themselves, that is to say to be the promoters, in the eyes of an assembly, of a certain public ridicule, of a certain laughing-stock that they would project upon a third person. Where the affair became rather comical, is that these two imbeciles, — (M. Laudet and M. Le Grix), — having to choose a victim who would not recalcitrate, chose me.

By preference.

It is very possible that their idea, if I may say so, was above all to bully me. I am not charged with making their psychology. I am charged with putting them back in their place. Which is not very good. At present. It is very possible that they said to themselves at first only: We are going to have a laugh with Péguy, — (I mean about Péguy), — (if I still have the right to use this word rigoler). — They are laughing less, today. There was also this Le Grix, who writes that I purr. He perhaps finds, at present, that I purr too much. He would prefer that I purr after someone else.

I knew all that. I saw it coming. For weeks and weeks Le Grix was preparing his article, as he said. Every time I encountered not a common friend, I do not say a friend common to Laudet and to me, we naturally have none, but a common comrade, in this great Paris where everyone knows everyone, a common acquaintance, with Laudet and me, with Le Grix and me, I said to him: Laudet is preparing a blow against me. He is wrong. It amuses him much. He is wrong. It amuses him before. It will not amuse him as much after. You ought to tell him he is wrong. Explain to him. That he let me be in peace. I do not know how to fight. I know nothing but to work. I love only tranquillity. I would sacrifice everything for my tranquillity. I am a writer. I am not a militant. And besides I do not fight like those gentlemen. I am a man of peace. I am very capable of dealing a nasty blow. With me one knows well when one begins. One does not know when one finishes. How one finishes. M. Laudet can have himself carried very far. We must believe that none of these notices to the bearer reached its destination. I dare affirm here that M. Laudet does not have a (single) friend. If M. Laudet had a single friend, he would have been warned, he would have been advised of the risks he was running, of the risks of the operation he was preparing. Everyone around him knew what to expect, knew what he was exposing himself to. He alone did not know. The great have no friends. He has only known me for a few months. He generally has only known letters for a few months. — (He doesn’t know — well, I know what I mean to say). — But he is surrounded by people who have known me for fifteen years, who had seen other examples, known old stories, who could, who should have put him on guard. Who could, who should have said to him: You are going to begin a nasty story. None did so. That was however the office of a true friend. I am not sure on the contrary that they did not incite him, encourage him rather perhaps, to please him, to flatter him, alas himself to betray him perhaps, to second his views, perhaps by a baseness of heart, by an obscure need, by a complicity, by a need for criminal complicity. M. Laudet has not a friend. Perhaps, alas, to mock him. Out of jealousy, out of envy. To see him engaged, he the comrade, the confrere, perhaps himself, surely himself, in an ugly story, dark hearts perhaps to see him tipped over, perilous, engaged in an adventure. Perilous. That is to say, they are all afraid at least of displeasing him. That is how the powerful never know the truth. I have therefore the right to advance that M. Laudet has not a friend. It is the great sadness and it is the great misfortune of kings, it is the great incapacity, the great weakness, the great diminution of the powerful and the dominators, it is the great solitude of monarchs, that they are never surrounded but by courtiers, that no one dares tell them the truth. M. Laudet is unfortunately surrounded only by people, and young people, who have but one thought: that one day or another they might bring him a novel that would earn them fifteen or twenty thousand francs.

Thirdly M. Laudet knows very well that there is a third reason, a secret and infinitely delicate reason for which I did not wish to seize M. Le Grix. So long as M. Le Grix does not exist, all goes well, I can still deal, I can consider M. Le Grix as an ordinary man. In short more or less as an ordinary man. But if M. Le Grix exists, he will not gain by it. If M. Le Grix exists, and if there is a M. Le Grix, who claims personally, who personally asserts his right to existence, that M. Le Grix has used such procedures to come to me, to have himself introduced to me that after his article I am rigorously forced to consider him as a base scamp.

So long as he does not exist, all goes well. As soon as he exists, he exists as a scamp.

M. Laudet announces a response from M. Le Grix. He means a new article. We must classify. I have not yet begun to respond to M. Le Grix. If he absolutely wishes it I will make a dossier of all his articles written and to be written, appeared and to appear, and I will make for him a cahier that will be properly his.

“François Le Grix,” says M. Laudet, “knew Péguy and his work, as well as Péguy, who has not stinted him the dedications of his books, knew him;…” If by that one means to demonstrate that I am a fool, one will arrive at it easily and I give both hands to it. I would not be surprised if M. Le Grix practiced ill manners, pushed the rascality to bringing out the dedications he has from me on some of my books. It is my great weakness, I know it, — (it is my great honor), — that this incurable incapacity for distrust, that this innate incompetence in everything that has to do with distrust, and that after twenty years of betrayals and defections of all sorts I am still as childlike, I am still as innocent in receiving the first young man who comes to see me, without any circumspection, de plano (forthwith), without any ulterior thought as if I were twenty years younger. If one means to say that I shall always be duped, one is a hundred times right. If one means to say that I shall always be a fool, I know it. I am one. But the more one proves that I am a fool, the more one will prove at the same time that M. Le Grix is a knave. The more one proves that I am not distrustful, the more one will prove at the same time that M. Le Grix is a traitor.

§ 279. — I think again of that management note and in spite of myself I am carried back twelve fifteen years, to the beginnings of the cahiers. What profound identity of manners. And how this profound identity of manners proves once more what I posited in Notre Jeunesse, that our socialism was a mystical socialism and a profound socialism, deeply akin to Christianity, a trunk come out of the old stock, literally already, (and still), a religion of poverty.

§ 280. — Secondly on my own existence. — M. Laudet feigns to believe that the announcement of the Bulletin is not from me, or not to know that it is from me, or to believe that it is not from me, or to know that it is not from me, or to ask me whether it is from me, or then to ask me, if it is from me, why I did not sign it, or to believe or to know that it cannot be from me.

These are useless feints and malices sewn with white thread and childishness. Not only does M. Laudet know very well that the announcement is from me, but from the principle, from the first hour, in advance he knew that the announcement was from me. M. Le Grix’s article had barely appeared in the Revue hebdomadaire when I publicly took the position that I would make this announcement. I said it, from then on, and since, to everyone, to fix the date. I said it notably to all whom I count of common comrades, of common confreres with M. Laudet and with M. Le Grix. I have never taken anyone by surprise. I said it so well that M. Laudet was joyously slapping M. Le Grix on the shoulder and they were mutually congratulating each other if I may say so and M. Laudet was saying to M. Le Grix: Well, my old Le Grix, it seems Péguy is going to respond to you. It is glory. What do they complain of. Now that it is glory, they are still not content.

Secondly, informed by the same means, by the same declarations, all the journals that have spoken of it not only have spoken of the announcement as being from me, but have made no affair of it and have spoken of it naturally as being from me. As being a response from me.

Thus firstly and secondly informed by all external means, by all objective information, by all concordant testimonies, by all the officious notices and reports, by the press, by the most formal official, public declarations M. Laudet knew perfectly that the announcement was from me. He knew it from the principle and in advance. He knows it always. He knew it notably at the moment when he himself was writing his response.

Shall I add that M. Laudet had no need of all these monuments to know what to expect. Thank God even if I wished it it is quite impossible for me to write an anonymous line. Everything I write is signed, even if there were no signature of my name at the bottom of the last line. The signature is everywhere. It is not necessary that there be a signature at the bottom in a corner. It is signed everywhere in the very tissue. There is not a thread of the text that is not signed.

It does not escape me that M. Laudet in refusing to recognize me in so bad an announcement believed he was playing me a good trick. He thought he was giving me change for my coin. He imagined, very sincerely perhaps, that he was doing to me as much as I had done to him in refusing to seize M. Le Grix. He was here, in this, very sincerely perhaps, the victim of an illusion. He took a false equivalence for a real one, a false similitude for a real one. The movement he made, the operation he performed is in no way a reply to mine, is in no way symmetrical, nor homothetic with mine. When I refused to seize M. Le Grix in the first article in order to seize M. Laudet, I went to the head. When M. Laudet refuses to seize me in the announcement, he turns away from the head. In short he shows that he, director of a big review, does not know what an announcement is.

§ 281. — For all his reasoning comes in sum to asking me, all his objurgation to demanding of me why I did not sign my announcement. If M. Laudet — I do not say knew his trade, I say had any inkling of his trade as Director of a Review — he would know what is one of the first teachings, or informings, that one receives, that an announcement is never signed, that this is one of its proper essential and literally foundational characters. That it is of the style, and of the order itself of the announcement. That the announcement, as its name indicates, is a certain order of communication made to the public. That this order is proper. That it is not confused with any other. That it obeys the following rules. That these rules are absolute. That moreover they are admirable, like all the rules of typography. That in this case they are marvelously significant; and marvelously balanced:

First, that the announcement appears at the head of the journal or the review or on the first page in a fine place. However if it does not appear absolutely at the head, it is fitting that it not appear at the head of another column, so as not to have the air of an article. It is articles that one makes begin at the top of a column. The announcement which does not come absolutely at the head of the journal or the review must come at eye level, drawing attention by its very bearing and if I may say so by a sort of modest position;

Secondly that the announcement be set in the same type-size as the body itself of the journal or in a size above. I mean of course in the same typographical type-size. Avoid above all setting it in a size below, lest the announcement have the air of a quotation, which must be avoided before all;

Thirdly that the announcement appear without title or signature between two thin rules. At the most a date, and a place of origin. This third rule is evidently the principal rule of the announcement, I mean its principal typographical rule, the one that gives it its very mark. The one that makes of it an announcement. The absence of signature evidently answers to the absence of general articulation, to the absence of title, makes particular balance to the absence of title.

Such are the principal typographical rules of the announcement. They are singularly beautiful. They are singularly significant. They make of the announcement in the journal or in the review a uniform sovereign, who has no need at all to raise his voice to make himself heard, a sovereign who always speaks in the same tone, a sovereign without panache and without gold border. Napoléon left the fine uniforms to Murat.

§ 282. — But what am I going to undertake to initiate this diplomat into the beauties, into the secret beauties of typography. Does he even know what a typographical type-size is. Does he even know what corps huit, and corps neuf and dix and douze are. Does he even know what italic and roman are. He perhaps believes it is a salad, romaine. Does he even know what lower-case is, and large and small capitals. Has he sometimes heard speak of compactes ordinaires and compactes penchées. Does he even know that there is normande and that there is égyptienne.

§ 283. — These rules of typographical composition and of page layout of the announcement imply evidently that the announcement is written in principle in the third person. They signify, or rather they translate, on their proper plane, in short they represent that the announcement is other, quite other and infinitely more than an article; notably that it is an act. That is why one must not abuse the announcement. The announcement is a proper kind of communication that one makes to the public. Without yet being either a declaration or a manifesto, it is certainly on the road that leads to the declaration and to the manifesto. It is a little already of their gravity. It is certainly of their kinship. It is even in a sense of a certain higher gravity, because it is of a muffled gravity.

It is of a sort of serious gravity, without brilliance; it is a sort of publication willed without publicity.

Thus typographically composed, thus laid out, thus drafted, thus presented, the announcement engages its author infinitely more than an article; more even than a declaration and than a manifesto. It engages its author and the responsibility of its author in a proper way, as a proper act, in a proper way, more ordinary, more taken for granted than the declaration or than the manifesto, all the more ordinarily grave, all the more grave.

The absence of signature particularly answers to the absence of title, it balances typographically the absence of title. It signifies that everyone well knows who the author is and that the author engages himself seriously and altogether.

§ 284. — This absence of signature also engages the Review or the journal where the announcement appears, not in the sense that the Review or the journal would endorse the announcement and the meaning and the responsibility of the meaning of the announcement, but in this sense that the Review or the journal, in publishing an announcement in the form of an announcement, certify by that very fact that this announcement is indeed an announcement having value of announcement, that thus the author of this “announcement,” whom everyone knows, engages himself in it seriously and altogether.

In other terms in publishing the announcement the Review or the journal does not endorse, does not certify the tenor of it. It certifies the form. It does not certify what is in it. It certifies that it is indeed an announcement. With all that it implies, with all that it entails of consequence and of responsibility. To come back to our old school language the Review or the journal which publishing an announcement, in form of an announcement, certifying the form and not certifying the matter.

§ 285. — Fourthly, if I know how to count, once M. Le Grix exists, once I exist, once I have not signed my announcement, the announcement being defined, then why did I make an announcement, and not make an article, an ordinary article.

I made an announcement precisely because I wished to engage myself more, because I wished to engage myself seriously and altogether. But here let us wait.

I made an announcement first because I wished to make an announcement. I am quite free to make an announcement. I have perhaps quite the right to make an announcement. An announcement is a certain proper order of communication that one makes to the public. I have perhaps quite the right to make this order of communication. When I wish. As I wish. I owe no account of it to M. Laudet. No account. I have no reasons to give him for it. I can only render reason to him for it, if he wishes. The order of the announcement is no more forbidden to me, I think, is no more closed to me than any other order of writing, than any other order of act.

All that M. Laudet can ask, — and this demand is quite legitimate, — is that behind an announcement there be someone. — Notably behind an announcement where he is taken to task. Personally. But M. Laudet knows very well, from the principle and even in advance, that I am behind my announcement, that I am there entirely and personally, that I am there, for nearly a month now, and more, at his entire disposal.

That being so, twenty reasons appear at once, why I made an announcement. It pleases me to indicate a few. It is certain that generally I have perhaps the right to do what I wish and that one does not see well why an order of communication should remain forbidden to me. But it is certain too that, unless one is a scatter-brain, one does not make an announcement without knowing why, without having express reasons for it. An announcement is not an article. An announcement if I may say so must not spend itself uselessly, it must not spend itself lightly. It is therefore certain that it is not without the gravest reasons that I resolved to make an announcement.

I may then avow that M. Le Grix’s article had inflicted upon me a particularly deep blow. Let M. Le Grix not pride himself on that. It is not any high proper value of this article that had inflicted upon me a particularly deep blow, it is a certain proper value of malice — let M. Le Grix not be filled with pride — it is also and perhaps above all, it was the proper historical conditions of ugliness and treachery in which this article had been fabricated. Even today, after all these debates, I do not well account for it. I ask myself what could have impelled a young man, to whom I have never done anything, to prepare, to combine, to compose, to invent, — to exercise against me so gratuitous a betrayal, — (and even more than gratuitous), — (I mean ungrateful), — historically so ugly, morally so base. Likewise for M. Laudet. It is one of those problems that surpass me, one of those problems for which I greatly fear that I shall be incompetent all my life. Likewise for this Laudet, to whom I had never done anything. I still ask myself where the blow comes from. I really have the impression that this Laudet is an instrument, and this Le Grix a sub-instrument. Now there is also a certain force of malice in man, a certain unhealthy taste in the rich man and in the bourgeois for pursuing, for humiliating the poor.

The more so as the enterprise does not go for them without some risk, and even without some danger. — (It is true they are like many others. When they began, they did not think perhaps how it would end and they did not look so far ahead). — (Today they would perhaps prefer not to have begun). — The more volume they have precisely and the more ambition they have, the more too they can lose in a battle, the more they offer hold to fortune.

Perhaps there is much inconsiderateness in their case. But even today I do not understand that a man who has his affairs, — difficult like all affairs, — and all the more difficult that he is the more ambitious, — should put on his back, gratuitously, inconsiderately this new affair. There is so much to do in Paris, without seeking the affairs that are not seeking us. That is what I was saying, precisely, that is what I was asking the common comrades during all the time that M. “Le Grix” was preparing his article. — Well now, I said to them, what does M. Le Grix want with me. — No. — What does M. Laudet want with me. Does he have nothing to do then, to occupy himself, in his Review, that he should embarrass himself with me. I can become a very great embarrassment for him.

It is then certain that struck to a depth where I had never been struck by this new aggression, by this aggression such as I had never undergone I had to take hold of myself suddenly and at a depth where I had not taken hold of myself for a long time. The form, and the force, of an article were no longer therefore enough for me to respond, no longer therefore carried my response. From all sides I was led, I was constrained to make an announcement.

Experience, alas, the result was unfortunately to justify me beyond all prevision. It is not without a great interior shame, without the feeling of a great self-abasement that one is thus the object of an ingratitude and of a baseness. There are faults one commits, which are grave, which imply, which entail less this shame, the feeling of this baseness and this abasement than these sorts of offenses of which one is the object, which one has done nothing to bring about. Let one see experience; let one see the result. Let one see this tone of baseness, this level of baseness into which I myself fall, into which I myself have descended and of which I am ashamed as soon as I myself respond to M. Laudet by placing myself on M. Laudet’s ground and by entering into conversation with M. Laudet. What would remain of all this debate, unhappy debate, if I had not made, if I had not written this announcement. What would there be in this cahier, alas, if I had not written this announcement. I would be very unhappy if I had had to consecrate two months of my life to these miseries and these basenesses, two full months of my life to M. Laudet and to responding to M. Laudet by holding to M. Laudet only, by placing myself on the ground, on the plane of M. Laudet, by holding the conversation vile and uniquely with M. Laudet. One has only to see the miserable result, the base result at which I myself arrive in this cahier and of which I am ashamed as soon as I engage in conversation with M. Laudet. What baseness. What grossness. What baseness mine becomes, what baseness communicated. How grossness is contagious. How baseness is communicating. What would I not have committed, (one sees it, one foresees it), if I had responded by an article to M. Laudet to the article of M. “Le Grix.”

That my friends have generally said: Why did you put M. Le Grix and M. Laudet into all that. They were quite unworthy of it. You ought to have made of this big chunk, of all this matter you treated there an introduction to a life of Joan of Arc — it is very probable, it is even certain that my friends are right. I put into this announcement a matter, preoccupations that infinitely surpass M. Laudet and M. Le Grix. I have overwhelmed M. Laudet and M. Le Grix. They are the only ones who have no right to complain of it. That my friends defend my work against me, a lasting work against a passing fit of anger, it is the greatest mark of friendship they can give me. But M. Laudet does not have to defend my work against me.

That my friends tell me as a grievance to have introduced M. Le Grix and M. Laudet into a level of thought, into a level of discourse, into a level of conversation of which they were not worthy, I consent to it. But it was for neither M. Le Grix nor M. Laudet to reproach me with it. That I raised so high and at the same time deepened the debate, they have gained too much by it, they are quite the only ones who have not the right to reproach me with it. They are quite the only ones who are not authorized but to thank me for it. I have bound their names, that unknown name of Laudet, that unknown name of Le Grix, to questions that surpass them by much, to pages that will live long after them. What are they complaining of.

Let them thank me on the contrary, let them render me thanks,

First for having made an announcement;

Secondly for having made that announcement.

I make them live.

§ 286. — Fifthly, if I have good memory, why, having to make this announcement, wishing to make this announcement, I made it in the Bulletin des Professeurs catholiques de l’Université.

Here too, likewise here I am forced to respond beforehand that I am perhaps free. Having to make this announcement, wishing to make this announcement one does not see well why I would not have had it pass where I wished. (Or rather where I could). Am I not free, after all. That I had it pass to the Bulletin, that concerns the Bulletin and me. M. Laudet, who has so much government, does not yet govern the relation of the Bulletin and me.

M. Laudet on this triumphs noisily. “on the other hand Péguy is not reduced to finding hospitality for his prose only at Coutances in the Bulletin des Professeurs catholiques de l’Université which has 190 subscribers, among whom 33 firm subscribers have not yet paid their subscription.” You grasp like me the fineness of the joke, especially repeated three times. It is the case to say: Numero Deus.

Well M. Laudet must take his part. He is very powerful. He knows very well he is very powerful. He is feared for his power and no less for his temporal alliances. He knows very well, I prefer to tell him at once that an announcement on M. Laudet would not easily be placed. He triumphs in it a little grossly. He is right. It is just that the big social volumes triumph.

It is certain that profoundly stricken by this unexpected aggression, by this gratuitous aggression, so full of treachery and ingratitude, I felt instantaneously the need to take hold of myself again. And that a man can only take hold of himself again on his deepest line of retreat. A man so assailed, to such a point, in such terms, a man so menaced would fail himself if he did not immediately seek a point of support in his deepest conscience, if he did not instantaneously take a base of operation, a point not only of support, but a point of rebounding, a point of resource in his deepest situation. Thus sprang up this announcement that I myself consider as an Introduction in form to my Mystères de Jeanne d’Arc.

The idea did not come to me for a single instant to have this announcement pass in the Cahiers de la Quinzaine. I consider essentially these Cahiers as a sort of free city, as a free bundle, as a free institution; as an institute. M. Laudet will find this statute and these manners difficult to understand, he who governs his Review and governs himself only by the capricious government of a despot. The very foundation of the Cahiers and the life, — (one could almost say the survival), — of the cahiers for twelve years is regulated by a discipline, is governed by a statute that everyone has always observed, that has never ceased to be respected on all sides. It is a house I manage. It is not a State I govern. Such are the manners of liberty. M. Le Grix, M. Laudet will perhaps have difficulty representing them to himself. We have here no difficulty in exercising them. As much as I fully claim my liberty in my turn and in my place as collaborator of the cahiers, for my works, for articles, — that liberty I temporally assure all our collaborators, — so much by a scruple of rectitude that M. Laudet will perhaps not understand I do not wish to engage the cahiers officially, in their office, ex officio (by virtue of office), and coming from their office, in an announcement which engaged only me personally but which personally engaged me entirely. An article on or against M. Laudet could and ought to appear in the cahiers. An announcement could not and ought not to appear in the cahiers.

Precisely because an announcement is much more than an article; engages infinitely more; is much more an act.

I wished that this announcement should only afterwards be carried to the knowledge of the subscribers of the cahiers; that it should only afterwards enter, at the second degree, at the second stage, into the cahiers; that I should make of it then so to speak a report in the cahiers; that it should appear there as a record, as a report I was making in the cahiers to my subscribers of an act, of an announcement that I had made outside the cahiers. And in sum that is what I obtained. In a Bulletin where I was entirely free I made an announcement; and the announcement I wanted. In the cahiers, where I am not free, I published the record, the report of this announcement, the whole dossier in short with this article-here which has resulted from it.

My situation toward the cahiers is a situation of entire rectitude, and of great simplicity. As author in the cahiers, as collaborator of the cahiers, for my works and for my articles I claim that entire spiritual and temporal liberty which I assure all our collaborators. But as manager of the cahiers I can only make there management announcements. Not only do I not wish to drag the cahiers into my own quarrels nor into what is more than quarrels, but I do not wish to drag them even into this deepening of my religious being to which it is evident I have been proceeding for several years with a growing severity.

Having then to make this announcement, wishing to make this announcement, not wishing to have it pass in the cahiers, where was I to have it pass. Granted, I was having it pass where I wished. But still I was having it pass where I could. What review, what journal, what periodical as much as the Bulletin could like the Bulletin recall to me, give back to me this antique purity of manners, this poverty, this smallness, this humility, this exiguity, these firm subscribers and these badly-firm subscribers, these hundred and fifty or two hundred subscribers, all this first purity of the foundation of the cahiers. What journal and what review, what periodical, what review was as much as the Bulletin our affiliate in spirit and in manners, our secret spiritual affiliate. Our daughter and our god-daughter. A new budding, a new source, a re-springing of our youth.

I see us again, my dear Lotte, I see again our common youth, I see again our common studies. You were a few years younger than I, one or two perhaps only, but it is enormous when one is just entering Rhétorique Supérieure and the other, — (to cite, the other of the two), — had already spent a year there the previous year, and is entering on the contrary for his second year as a veteran, veteranus, old soldier, former soldier. We were facing then the same great war, which was the war of the entry into the old École Normale Supérieure. We are two old Louis-le-Grand, you and I, and two old Barbistes, incorrigible old Louis le Grand and Barbistes. We are of that little company of Barbistes who for some years preparing the École Normale Supérieure followed the courses of the Rhétorique Supérieure of Louis-le-Grand. Come, we were going to cagne — let us say the slang word of our youth and may our young heirs not be afraid of the old word: we were two cagneux. Marcel Baudouin, Tharaud, Deshairs, Péguy, Roy, Pesloüan, — (this last one alone not a cagneux, he was in elementary or special classes and was preparing the École Polytechnique), — for the first layer, and for the second layer more or less cagneux Baillet, Lotte, Riby, Poisson, the other Tharaud, alter, the other of the two, you Lotte; singular company not of friendship only, singular company of fidelity where death alone could strike a missing, where twenty years of the wear of life have not been able to introduce a fissure. When the age of Confessions comes, — (it approaches, thank God, my old Lotte, it approaches, it approaches, it will hardly delay any longer), — we shall try to represent these two or three marvelous years of our youth, the ardent years. All was pure then. All was young. And you understand well that by that I do not mean only that we were young and that we saw the world as young. Historically all was young then for three or four marvelous years. A young socialism, a new socialism, a grave socialism, a little childlike, — (but that is what is needed to be young), — a young-man socialism had just been born. An ardent Christianity, it must be said, profoundly Christian, profound, ardent, young, grave had just been reborn. It too was rather generally named social Catholicism. In socialism, in life itself by an exchange was a sort of Christianity from without, in Jaurès himself the Jaurèsian contaminations had not been born and had not yet penetrated. The Dreyfus affair was still preparing only in the deepest of shadow its inconceivable destinies. France itself appeared to be preparing herself joyously and fully, healthily and almost happily and almost advantageously. For what alas she was preparing, we have known it, we have experienced it since.

But what did it matter then. We shall make our Confessions, my old Lotte. We shall try to represent these three marvelous years. That old Sainte-Barbe and that old Louis-le-Grand. That sort of proper quality, that young and pure quality, that noble fineness which Latin and Greek had in the teaching of our master M. Bompard. That sort of great liberality, of goodness of spirit and even of heart which philosophy had in the teaching of our master M. Lévy-Bruhl.

For we are, we vaunt ourselves on being, as Homer says, old sons of the University. — (Of which you are a body and a spirit, of which I am in spirit and almost and so to speak in body). — It is by a filial movement that for fifteen years we have carried ourselves to its rescue. It is a filial movement that carries us, that animates us to push back these invasions of barbarism.

It is a great joy, my dear Lotte, not to have had a single fissure in this friendship, in this fidelity of twenty years. And yet God knows how life has dispersed us into different conditions. But we must believe that the paste was good and that the race was good and that the heart was good.

I must tell the truth, since I am pressed. I must not present the operation back to front. It is not I who asked myself, it is not that I asked myself first, having to have a manifesto pass, where I would have it pass. In short, I mean an announcement. The operation was much less artificial, much less systematic. The Bergsonians will understand me, if I still have the right, if we still have the right to use this name, this word Bergsonians. The operation was much more spontaneous, much more organic, and so moreover it was the contrary. It is on the contrary the presence of Lotte and of the Bulletin that made germinate in me instantaneously the idea, the form, already the tenor of an announcement. It is this obscure, this secret presence of fidelity that aroused everything instantaneously.

Assailed by an assault so unexpected, struck as deeply as I have said and as one can think, evidently I cast a single glance around me, and in this single glance instantaneously the Bulletin was in its place.

I go further and in reality I performed in sum the following operation. Every man on the edge of fate has performed this operation. Struck, assailed so deeply, instantaneously I went over my life again. In a flash of a single glance I saw this embarrassment of twenty years. And following the other line, the one that has not been historically inscribed, in this glance I represented to myself the other Péguy, the Péguy unburdened of so many public charges, the Péguy I was becoming if I had not at twenty assumed so many charges and public responsibilities. Now it is certain, and it was for me of a striking evidence, that the line I would have followed is precisely the one Lotte has followed. I would today be teaching philosophy in some lycée in the provinces. As he teaches grammar. In some Coutances. I would be plying that trade of teaching, one of the most beautiful, the most beautiful perhaps there is, which I passionately love. I would be passionately attached to my trade, to my class, as I attached myself passionately to these cahiers. I would passionately love my trade, my class, as I passionately love typography, the cahiers. I would have some miscalculations, as I have many in the cahiers. In short if I had become this Péguy of secondary teaching, the first in date and in existence, the one I was made to be, it is certain that my situation today would be exactly the following: I would be a faithful subscriber to Lotte’s journal.

§ 287. — One sees badly that M. Laudet should reproach me precisely with my scruples, with my fidelity in respecting the statute of the cahiers. To begin with he is not charged with governing my relation to the Cahiers.

§ 288. — For whoever knows how to read, typography, what is more imposing than this absence of signature at the bottom of the announcement. How this absence fills the very text, the body of the text. How it makes the signature flow back into the whole text. The text is not signed, then. The whole text is signed. Neither title nor signature. Neither exordium nor peroration. No inclined plane. No ascent, no descent. No access. No exit door. No vestibule. A fine plateau cut as a cliff.

It is truly the sovereign who has no need to raise his voice to be heard.

§ 289. — For the rest I do not see that I have much to say to the (second) article of M. Laudet. He has an extremely simple procedure, and one that disarms. He withdraws everything that M. Le Grix had put in his first article. Naturally he does not withdraw them purely and simply. That would be too simple. He says that M. Le Grix did not say it and that it is I who said he had said it. It is classic.

I can say nothing more to that. All my texts are on the table. M. Laudet must believe he can well count on the mental laziness of his habitual subscribers and readers not to fear that they will go look up in his number 24, of June 17, 1911 the very texts I have cited and that he denies in his number 32 of August 12, 1911.

When a debate has come to that point there is nothing more to say. M. Le Grix writes certain lines, certain sentences, certain words and publishes them in the Revue hebdomadaire. I cite them. At once M. Laudet denies them in the Revue hebdomadaire.

If one wishes to say that M. Le Grix had perhaps not seen all that he was writing when he was writing what he was writing in the Revue hebdomadaire, and that it is I who made him see it, and made him see it publicly, and that then, at that moment, at that second moment he would certainly have preferred not to see it, and above all, if I may say so, that he would have preferred not to see it from my hand, that I should not make him see it, that it should not be I who made him see it, and above all that I should not make him see it publicly, that is another defense of M. Le Grix, it is another system of defense, to which I would not be far from subscribing. I am rather inclined to believe that indeed M. Le Grix had not seen at all all that he was writing. Perhaps, no doubt he was pushed by others, by others more cunning, who have not uncovered themselves. Perhaps he tasted only a certain wickedness, a certain taste in playing me a bad good trick. Carried away by this passion of wickedness, by this taste for bullying me, for rocking me, by his pride and by this infatuation with making people laugh at me, perhaps indeed he paid no attention at all to what he was writing, or not enough. Perhaps he did not look at all at what he was writing. Another version, another reading would be that even if he wished, even when he looks at it, even when he pays attention to it he is quite incapable of knowing what he writes. I must avow that this second version would have rather more partisans. He is generally represented to me as a strong fool. Moreover the two versions are not contradictory. He may very well be at the same time foolish and conceited. Not to pay attention and not to see any more if he did pay attention. Only, when one is there, one does not exercise, regularly, the magisterium of literary criticism in one of our most important reviews.

If M. Laudet chose M. Le Grix, he must all the same know a little whom he chose. If M. Le Grix was imposed upon him by someone, he must know a little who imposed him on him.

If M. Le Grix saw what he was doing, he was a knave. If he did not see what he was doing, generally if he does not see what he is doing, he was a fool. Now he may have been knave and fool at once. When we were at the lycée, I believe that it was the contrary propositions in formal logic that were such that either one was true and the other false; or one was false and the other true; or they were both false. But they could only occupy these three positions. They could not occupy the fourth position. They could not both be true.

I had made M. Le Grix this favor of suppressing him from being. I believe I had done him in this a great favor. I am afraid M. Laudet has done him a very bad service in reinstalling him in being.

§ 290. — I would only like to present a few more observations. Otherwise the conversation cannot continue. We are in the kingdom of disavowal. It is a back-and-forth, it is a circuit of disavowal. M. Le Grix was disavowing Christendom. M. Laudet disavows M. Le Grix. Let us be assured that in the article announced to us M. Le Grix will disavow M. Le Grix. It is a disavowal that returns upon itself. It is a boomerang. Peter had disavowed three times. But it was in the same direction.

§ 291. — We have only to stop on a few words. Before doing so, — beforehand, — (if it is still permitted to speak of beforehand at the end of two hundred and some pages), — I must render a certain justice to M. Laudet, — and not certainly in my sense, — and in my system of measure, — a small justice. M. Laudet in his article has conducted himself very well toward M. Le Grix. I say so without any kind of irony. It is well enough known how I have a horror of irony, of all that seeks the ridiculous, of all that flatters the taste for the ridiculous in finding, in flattering and cultivating it, of all that flatters this reigning demagogy of the ridiculous. It is well enough known, more than enough, how irony is contrary to my very temperament. I have never hidden the profound taste I have for the comic. Nothing is as serious as the comic. Nothing is as profoundly akin to the tragic as the comic. One could almost say that the one is another face of the other. That is why among all intelligent peoples the comic and the tragic, comedy and tragedy go together, like two beautiful oxen, obey exactly the same yoke, pointed by the same goad obey exactly the same rules. To the same rules of art. To the same external rules of representation. To the same internal rules of an inner representation. To the same internal regulations. To the same organic rules. The five acts of Molière are the exact reply of the five acts of Racine and of Corneille. The comic of the tragic, comedy, comedy and tragedy are closely linked in the serious. Irony on the contrary is the finest ornament of the frivolous.

I say it therefore without any irony, I am happy that M. Laudet in his article has shown himself to that point so good a comrade and so good a boss for M. Le Grix. I say so without any irony, that honors him greatly. The danger, for his character, for the esteem we must keep of his character, the danger was that seeing M. Le Grix embarked in so bad an affair he might have had some velleity to abandon him there. To let him get out of it all alone. Not only has he not done so. But he comes very actively to the aid of his young collaborator. He occupies himself, he employs himself. He does not idle at it. All his article is visibly inspired by the very great desire to honestly disengage M. Le Grix, to carry himself with M. Le Grix, to come to it with M. Le Grix, he M. Laudet. It is good. It is even beautiful. I have said often enough, in these very cahiers, the singular esteem I had for band morality, to have the right to declare loudly that it is here a trait of character that honors M. Laudet greatly. All one could fear, was precisely that M. Laudet, to whom I had legitimately gone back up, that M. Laudet, whom I had legitimately seized, should not let go, then, his young collaborator badly embarked.

§ 292. — Why did it unfortunately have to be that M. Le Grix should be indefensible. Why did it have to be that M. Le Grix, and the article of M. Le Grix, and at the head of the one and of the other M. Laudet himself should be undischargeable. An attitude I like less already, which is already much less clear and in my sense less straight, is that M. Laudet should make use, in his article, of the compliments that M. Le Grix had ostensibly distributed to me in his article, to the Cahiers and to me. I avow that these compliments that M. Le Grix had ostensibly distributed to me in his article had appeared to me extremely suspect and the use M. Laudet makes of them today to preliminarily put me in the wrong by giving me an aspect of ingratitude toward M. Laudet and first toward M. Le Grix does not make them more sympathetic to me, does not make them more innocent to me, only confirms me in the opinion I had of them in the first place. “François Le Grix,” writes M. Laudet, “knew Péguy and his work, as well as Péguy, who has not stinted him the dedications of his books, knew him; to tell the truth he was not without feeling some sympathies for Péguy, — (very honored, my dear confrere), — and he does not fail to bear witness to them to him in his article. He praises ‘the inspiration’ — (my children, my children, monsieur Laudet do not make us more innocent than we are), — (everyone knows well that when one begins by praising ‘the inspiration’ of a writer, it is the greatest bad sign, it is that one wishes, it is that one is about to proceed to a regular topping of his work. — (And consequently, one cannot too much lay down this principle, to the greatest topping, to the only topping perhaps, to the only topping certainly that one can perform on him). — (All you will be able to demonstrate, monsieur Laudet, is that M. Le Grix did not fail in this rule of the genre. (Besides, from his point of view, he would have been wrong to fail in it). — (It is too good; it is too convenient; it is too expected; which is one of the essential rules of the theater). — “He praises ‘the inspiration’ of the writer as much as ‘his life of laborious probity’; — (unless to speak in the end of my life of lazy improbity, one does not see, I do not see well how it is made otherwise. But when one begins at present, when one sets oneself to praising my life and my probity and my labor, it is sad to say, I begin also at present unfortunately to mistrust. It is generally that one wishes, that one is going to begin to methodically top my major work, my first work, my work in short, which is naturally my work as a writer). — (Likewise alas and as parallelly, likewise alas, still more alas when one begins to speak well of the cahiers, one must alas, still more alas, one must still more unfortunately mistrust; it is that one wishes, it is that one is going to begin to top my work, in short my own work, I mean naturally my work as a writer. It has become the rule of the genre. You will see that he will not fail in it. One sees in what order of base feelings, and I can say to what degree of sadness these gentlemen force me to move). — “He recalls how the Cahiers have, for nearly twelve years now, given the most methodical and the most persevering example of disinterestedness in the welcome made to writers, of the search for truth in the procedure of art; …” — I would dearly like to know how it is made to say the contrary. This way of saying that the well-deserved, historical good said of you is a favor done to you. Is a credit one takes upon you. At once after comes the point, of which there are several, which are in M. Laudet’s article the trace, the heritage, the continuation, the endorsement of M. Le Grix’s article. — “he also recognizes — (and also is rather good and has a small innocent air, he at first has the air of wishing to mean in addition, and one perceives afterwards that he means on the other hand, equally; on the contrary; in counter-part, by equivalence, to make (just) compensation; to do him justice; strict; against him; because, you see, one must also be just; it is a small enough of polemic) — he also recognizes how the author, after having been a Dreyfusard and a socialist, had arrived at recognizing the necessity of a renaissance of spiritualism and at submitting to a restored mystical discipline.”

Let us be rid of this point, although it bears perhaps on the very substance of the debate I personally have with M. Le Grix, and I did not wish to enter into this personal conversation I have today with M. Laudet. But M. Laudet, happier than M. Le Grix, has so happily circumscribed the terms of the debate that I cannot resist the desire to circumscribe a brief reply.

What I reproach M. Le Grix with is not only, is not so much, that he has understood absolutely nothing of what I do. He had the right. And even if he had not had the right, both I could do nothing about it, and he could do nothing about it.

In the second degree what I reproach him with is not only either, is not so much either that he has understood absolutely nothing of what I do and that he set himself at once to writing about it. It appears, they say it is done. What I reproach him with as a bad procedure, as an obvious procedure of bad faith, and even rather childish, somewhat clever, but the one does not exclude the other, is having attributed to me, is having presented as being from me, as coming from me, as coming from my opinion all the harm he wished to say of me, that he was preparing to say of me. This tactic is represented in the echo sentence of M. Laudet by these few words: ”… had arrived at recognizing the necessity of a renaissance of spiritualism and at submitting to a restored mystical discipline.”

Now if I have precisely said something during these last years bearing on the history of these last twenty years and in them on the history of a whole generation, bearing witness for a whole generation what I have precisely said is the contrary, — (and that proves one has much trouble making oneself heard), — it is that we have always continued in the same direction, it is that there is in our career, in our life no point of reversal, — (I do not say so because it is good, I say so because it is true; I do not say at all that this is worth more, I say that this is so; I do not say at all that we are worth more than those who had a point of reversal, a point of conversion, a conversion; that would be very far from my thought too; and even perhaps exactly the contrary of my thought; I say only that we are thus, that we were such, that we have been thus, that our history was such, in all heroic senses). God preserve us from this thought that we were worth more than the others. More than anyone. It is perhaps the thought of which I have the most horror. The human heart has its secrets. It has its detours. As much as I hold to being of an eminent race, of an eminent people, because it is true, as much as I hold that this race, that this people be rare, unique, eminent, because it is true, as much on the contrary, or perhaps rather by the same movement, so much do I also hold to it that in this race, in this people, once in this race, once in this people, we be not more cunning than the others.

I do not want us to be better than the others, in the French race. If there is anyone who holds to not being better than the others, it is I. And as I love to share I hold very much also to it that the others not be better than the others, to it that our generation not be better than the others. It must not be understood in the sense that all these French generations would be equally little good, equally mediocre, but in the sense naturally that all these French generations were rare in the history of the world, that they were unique, eminent, that all of them will well equal us, often better; that all of them had a price temporally infinite, all even the one that got itself beaten in ‘70.

And which thus had us beaten in ‘70.

It is therefore without a shadow of pride, it is therefore not to vaunt myself that I say it. I say it only because it is true. Because it is a fact. In fact we have not had, our generation has not had in our career a point of reversal. Neither a point of retorsion nor a point of revulsion. We have constantly followed, we have constantly held the same straight way and it is this same straight way which has led us where we are. It is not an evolution, as one says a little foolishly, employing inconsiderately, by an abuse itself incessant, one of the words of modern language which has itself become the most loose, it is a deepening. It is evident that I can speak here only for myself. And for that race of spirits which performs with me the same deepening. We have held for twenty years, since our youth the same straight way, the same way of deepening. It has led us far. Thanks be rendered. I can speak naturally only for myself and for those of my spiritual race among those of my carnal race. It is by a constant deepening of our heart in the same way, it is in no way by an evolution, it is in no way by a reversal that we found the way of Christendom. We did not find it by returning. We found it at the end. It is for that, one must well know it on both sides, among the ones and among the others, it is for that we shall never disavow an atom of our past. We may have been sinners. We have been so certainly very much. Pro nobis peccatoribus (for us sinners). But we have never ceased to be in the good way. Our invincible pre-fidelity, our young pre-fidelity to Christian manners, to Christian poverty, to the deepest teachings of the Gospels, our obstinate, our quite natural, this going-on secret pre-fidelity already constituted for us an invisible parish.

We may have been before the letter. We have never been against the spirit.

It is therefore by a profound un-intelligence, by a gross misreading, precisely the one that ought not to be made, as always, that M. Laudet, adopting, summarizing a much more extended misreading of M. Le Grix, writes: “he also recognizes how the author, after having been a Dreyfusard and a socialist, had arrived at recognizing the necessity of a renaissance of spiritualism and at submitting to a restored mystical discipline.” If I have on the contrary said something, during two and three years, that expressed, that represented, that translated what has been happening for twenty years, it is that our Dreyfusism and our socialism was profoundly spiritualist, — (although I have no grace for using this word, discredited by Cousin and by the Cousinian school, which was an old intellectualist school), — and that it was profoundly mystical and profoundly a mystical discipline. As to restoring a mystical discipline, thank God one has no need of us. There is no question of restoring an abolished reign. There is question if I may say so of continuing all quietly in time in our turn a spiritual reign that will never be abolished.

§ 293. — In summary, going from the preliminary toward the crowned, and remaining in geography, — (if I still have the right to use this word), — there are the Christians who ignore themselves, — (it is a very numerous people); — there are those who do not ignore themselves, but who are unfortunately not Christians, — (it is unfortunately a very numerous people); — and there are the Christians who know themselves, — (it is a rather numerous people).

§ 294. — I wish to say it in a few words. M. Laudet may well invoke against me, to tax me with ingratitude, the compliments that M. Le Grix is good enough to address to me at the head and at the tail of his article, and sometimes along the way, for he has sprinkled them from afar to afar throughout his article, as with a light powder. He has powdered me as with hoarfrost.

Firstly even if these compliments were not very suspect to me, — (and they greatly are), — I would not well understand, I refuse to enter into this strange bargain by which I could not respond to M. Laudet and to M. Le Grix, by which M. Laudet and M. Le Grix would have all rights over me because M. Le Grix had made me certain compliments. What is this traffic. What is this haggling. What is this balancing. If it is permitted, if it is owed; if it is decent to use a gross expression to signify a gross operation, I have never walked in this sort of combination. What is this singular equivalence one wishes to establish. What is wanted of me to do with the compliments of M. Le Grix. The compliments of M. Le Grix do not tempt me. The compliments of M. Le Grix do nothing for me. I do not ask the compliments of M. Le Grix. The compliments of M. Le Grix are as incompetent as his criticisms.

On the other hand, secondly the compliments of M. Le Grix are suspect to me on all sides. They are notably suspect to me because and in that they hold in no way to the rest. They are in no way complementary to the rest. They are there, they come there one does not know why. They are generally purely contradictory with all the rest. Without even any care for even formal binding. Must it be I who accuses, who argues M. Le Grix of incoherence and even of incohesion.

I will at the least have to accuse him of bad faith. These unadherent compliments, these badly attached compliments serve only to mask the operation. They serve only to give the change. It is they precisely, and they serve only to that, they are placed there only for that, they serve only to cover M. Laudet, M. Le Grix, it is they precisely who render noxious all the imputations, all the rest. What I will reproach M. Le Grix with, since one wishes that he exist, is this bad faith moreover rather well known and rather gross which consists in laying someone low while affecting to take his defense. To take his side. All M. Le Grix’s article sums up in that, can be gathered on the following schema. He plays the following well-known comedy: I am, he says, the lawyer for this poor Péguy, — (he is barely short of saying, he even almost says that it is I who entrusted him with my defense); — I love him well; everyone loves him well; he is so deserving; — (padiéros, nos agenoux — by God, on our knees — to him who calls you deserving); — what a pity that with the best will in the world, with all the devotion one has for him one cannot find a single argument to give in his favor. How unfortunate that he is so impossible to defend. That his cause is so abandoned. How he is to be pitied. How I am to be pitied. How you are to be pitied. Let us pity him. Pity me. In truth all this game is not very new.

It is a scene from Courteline. But it is much less good than in Courteline.

§ 295. — This very legitimate, very praiseworthy care, to which I have not only subscribed, which I have applauded, of defending, of supporting M. Le Grix, even of endorsing him, perhaps only carries M. Laudet sometimes a little far. He pronounces words he ought not to pronounce. He argues me somewhere of forgery and fraud. He pronounces with regard to me the words of forgery and fraud. They are quite big words. And quite useless. They are childishness. If we must encounter each other, monsieur Laudet, and that depends solely on you, however partisan we may be of Greek let us not imitate Homer’s heroes. Let us encounter each other tranquilly and if I may say so on a certain background of dignity.

“It is then,” writes M. Laudet, “the organization of a publicity given to my name and I would have no reason to complain of it, being gratuitously named in the Bulletin 161 times. — (Yes, monsieur Laudet, we grasp the fineness of the joke). — But however slight the relief that the criticism of the Bulletin des Professeurs catholiques de l’Université could give, it is my duty to consider and to signal as a forgery the use one makes of my name for an article that one knows I did not write, and the fraud is all the more grave that one makes M. Le Grix say in the article that one has interest to attribute to me things he never said and against which moreover he himself will defend himself.”

§ 296. — I could not too much counsel M. Laudet to use these big words wisely. If it is to frighten me, I am not in the habit. If he wishes to call me, I know how to surrender myself. He has no need to make so much noise. Let him accuse less, let him argue less. I understand. He has no need to cry so loudly. Let him argue all the less as I too, if I respond to M. Le Grix, since M. Le Grix exists, since one wishes that M. Le Grix exist, I too will have to make use of these words. Not at all to do a violence. Not at all to make an insult. Not even to make an offense. But to qualify historically an act. To enunciate even historically a fact. One of the arguments I will indeed have to produce against M. Le Grix, — (and will it not be forgery, and will it not be fraud), — one of my principal arguments perhaps, perhaps the capital one will be not that he said much ill of me in his article, but that all the ill he said of it he attributed to me, I mean he presented to the public as being from me, as coming from me. As having been said by me. It is one of the most curious cases of reportage I have ever encountered.

§ 297. — M. Laudet knows very well at present that I committed no forgery and that I committed no fraud in seizing M. Laudet and in refusing to seize M. Le Grix. Let us not make him out a fool. He knew very well before I had explained it to him so expressly. So long as one has not abolished the decree-law of 1848 on subcontracting, I refuse to have to do with sub-contractors.

§ 298. — What sort of platitude and baseness to reproach me precisely with the dedications I made to him.

§ 299. — What singular bookkeeping to debit me with the suspect compliments he has made of me. The compliments of M. Le Grix are nothing to me. But even if they were something to me, what singular idea to debit the compliments one makes.

§ 300. — This very praiseworthy care to disengage M. Le Grix, — (Laudatus laudabilis — the praised one praiseworthy), — sometimes carries M. Laudet a little far. M. Laudet sometimes overshoots a little. — “Faced with such incoherences — (it is I, monsieur, without any vanity) — one hesitates — (says M. Laudet) — one hesitates to address oneself to the tribunals that do justice to defamations; I prefer to turn first toward Charles Péguy whom I do not know — (how true that is) — (that) — and against whom I entertain no personal animosity, and I say to him: ‘Dear Master, — (please, please, monsieur Laudet) — you are too well-informed — (alas yes I am too well-informed) — to seriously insinuate — (he calls that insinuating) — that the Revue hebdomadaire is stuffed with heresies…’” — Monsieur Laudet let us not speak of your addressing yourself to the tribunals that do justice to defamations. If you wish to make a fine career in the world of letters, I vigorously counsel you to inaugurate this career by attributing me before the tribunals that do justice to defamations. What, immediately the secular arm. I vigorously counsel M. Laudet to submit to the tribunals of the State, to have decided by the tribunals of the State the half spiritual half temporal lawsuit I am bringing against him. I have against M. Laudet, I bring against M. Laudet two grievances, I oppose to him two heads of accusation. Let us suppose I have insulted them a little rudely. First, and it is in my sense an infinitely grave grievance, I have accused him of trying to operate an embezzlement of the faithful consciences. Secondly and in the order of culture I have accused him of trying to operate an embezzlement of the classical consciences. Long live the nation, let him submit these two great lawsuits to the tribunals of the Republic. It will be curious enough. To begin with it will be new. Does he think I am going to let myself be devoured raw. Is he unaware that there is a certain thing called Counterclaim. Which does not, alas, mean a second Convention. Does he not believe, does he not know that there is in M. Le Grix’s article and in M. Laudet’s own article rich matter to seat the most opulent of counterclaims. A sumptuous counterclaim demand and prosecution. Does he not know that I too have a lawyer; does he not know who acts for me; and that happily my defender is not always a minister. — (Happily for me, unhappily for the country).

§ 301. — What would make me believe that M. Laudet is infinitely more engaged with M. Le Grix than he himself perhaps believes in what I have allowed myself to call the embezzlement of the faithful consciences, is a certain tone of basenesses and triviality and bad familiarity with the sacred, a tone of a baseness, of a triviality, of a bad familiarity at bottom which reappears regularly at the surface, and almost constantly, in M. Laudet’s article. I have a horror of nothing as much as of that. Nothing is as odious to me, nothing is as declared in my sense as that base sort of bad familiarity of sacrilege. That sort of large and gross joke, triviality, that vulgarity, that lack of constraint in the very discourse pertaining to the sacred. For me these gross manners of language and of bearing, of discourse, of attitude, all that betrays the very being, it is a personal opinion, in which I do not wish to engage anything, but personally for me these gross hands are more odious to me, I must say, than false but respectful propositions, false but deferential ones. This sort of base triviality that goes oh! oh! It is constant in M. Laudet’s article. For me, it is evidently a weakness, but I almost never judge a man so to speak on what he says, but on the tone in which he says it. What we say is often grave, serious. The tone in which we say it always is. What we say is not always disclosing. The tone in which we say it always is. There is in this article of M. Laudet a constant vulgarity at bottom of this sort which constantly reappears at the surface in patches and which gives me the worst opinion, both of his purity of intention, — (I really do not have the right to speak of his purity of heart), — and even of less than that, of a certain elementary fineness, of a certain elementary average good bearing of heart and of spirit, the least one can ask. The mechanism of this grossness, of this vulgarity is, itself, easily seizable. It consists in directly relating like a badly fitted piece I do not say the sacred to the profane, which here would have no sense, but a certain greatness of holiness, a certain tone of the sacred, to a quite other smallness of Christian mediocrity such as ours may be. Instead of referring our Christian mediocrities to the greatnesses of Christian holinesses for this operation of carrying-over in communion that we must do and that can save us, M. Laudet brings them together, relates them instantaneously the one to the other, the one upon the other, like two badly joined, badly made, badly fitted pieces, not made for each other, brutally, he makes of it a badly made joining. I do not know if I make myself well understood. Or rather I know that I do not make myself well understood. I feel very vividly, — (but it is difficult to express), — I feel very vividly that it is very grave, I feel very vividly this kind of impiety which consists in mixing everything together, in brutally relating by a badly made joining these greatnesses upon our mediocrities. There is there a sort of proper indecency which wounds me much. Which strikes me very vividly. M. Laudet would in vain believe that I did as much, that this is what I did in the announcement, for in the announcement I did very precisely the contrary. Far from beating down these greatnesses and relating them to our mediocrities by a badly fitted joining, I have on the contrary, starting from our mediocrities, made the ascent that I was bound to toward the consideration of these greatnesses. What wounds me, in this sort of mediocrity I mean to say, is a constant abasement, is a constant lowering, is a constant debasement. A constant reduction of greatnesses to mediocrities. That too is intellectualist, is akin to the intellectualist and intellectual mania, to the deep secret taste of the intellectual for baseness, for mediocrity. An underhanded, dubious related-ness, much more than an assimilation, of greatnesses to mediocrities. It is exactly the contrary that I did in the announcement. I raised at one stroke and held myself in the high region. M. Laudet will say what he wishes of the announcement. It is his right, it is fair war. I say nothing to that. There is a rule and a permission and licences of war. He will say all he wishes, but he will not be able to say that I lowered the debate.

What wounds me, is to see these greatnesses applied directly, — all greatnesses and how infinitely the greatnesses of holiness, — to a work of derision, of a certain base vulgar mockery. I assuredly express myself very badly. I cannot explain this. One will perhaps understand better by an example. Here are some of these patches:

“But, to be complete,” writes M. Laudet, “it must be added that Le Grix’s praises also entailed reservations and it is then that everything went wrong. Le Grix’s cult for Péguy was neither of latria nor even of dulia; …” One feels what I mean to say, this sort of proper impiety, of bad tone. Elsewhere:

“No, he did not know that there was a fifth gospel, — (one cannot believe how much these sorts of jokes hurt me, deeply, wound me. They hurt me so much that just to copy them to have them printed and publish them in my turn, — and yet it is for my defense. And it must be. But it is a dirty trade. To defend oneself. Like this. — Just to copy them by his hand, to defend myself, with my ink and my pen on my copy-paper, I experience the feeling of an abasement of myself, perfectly founded feeling, I experience a sort of undeniable abasement, I feel well, undeniably, that I am making myself an accomplice, in a base complicity, that I am giving him my hand, that I am entering into the game, that I am making myself like him. I have the feeling of committing here I do not say the only fault, I do not say perhaps the only sin, but I say certainly the only baseness I have committed in all this debate. Of copying. Of reproducing, of republishing it here. Non-deceptive feeling. I see well that I am plying a bad trade. It is the only part of this big cahier that engraves a regret in me. I am indeed told that it is forced, that I must defend myself, that I must indeed show what sort of people I am dealing with. We know more than enough that inevitable basenesses and that we only see committed can leave us with regrets and I will go so far as to say with an eternal contrition.

“No,” — he writes, and I am forced to copy, — “No, he did not know that there was a fifth gospel, what am I saying! almost a new Messiah — (he wrote this frightful baseness) — who had ‘his mystery’ — (he wrote this frightful baseness) — and that if one ventured a timid criticism or an excusable incomprehension, one would be cut off from the Catholic world, — (if in my turn I wished to use big words, monsieur Laudet, where did I say that one would be cut off from the Catholic world, and by what right would I have said it, where is my magisterium. And besides it really resembles me, to have said it. Just after this Mystère de la Charité that M. Laudet certainly did not read, where the cutting off of a single member is constantly considered as an infinite calamity, on the threshold of this Porche opened on hope where the only hope considered, where the only hope of so-to-speak species is naturally the hope of salvation. And besides it really resembles me, this cutting-off, and this Catholic world. It resembles me as much as this attempt at stylization of popular speech that M. Le Grix not only attributes to me, but, if I may say so, that he attributes to me as my attributing to myself. I do not believe I have ever spoken of the Catholic world. I have often spoken of the Church, of communion. I do not feel fully myself, I do not really touch the bottom of my thought except when I write chrétienté — Christendom. Then I see fully what I am saying. I never wished to cut off M. Laudet from the Catholic world. I have, as a simple faithful, argued him with wishing to operate an embezzlement of the faithful consciences).

… “one would be cut off from the Catholic world, put on the index by the recent pontiff, — (one feels the game, the frightful game, this frightful baseness), — by the one who employs no expression that is not ‘technically theological’ and who ‘will henceforth oversee the faithful consciences.’”

Elsewhere:

“The Péguy school has decided, after examination, that he no longer exists and even that he never existed. Everything becomes easy when one is the author of a mystery, and as the Academy of Coutances did not know François Le Grix, it was decided that he was a myth or rather that his name — (I pass over Everything becomes easy when one is the author of a mystery, but one feels this contamination, this willed mixture, this will to speak forgeringly, this confusion of registers, so that one never knows on what plane one is, on what plane one is speaking, this mixture, this myth placed with this mystery) — was only the pseudonym of Fernand Laudet, director of the Revue hebdomadaire.”

Elsewhere:

“It is not without interest moreover to give some other extracts from this new apocalypse that comes to us from Coutances; the texts, put into verses, like those of the scriptures, will enlighten readers better than any commentary, and we point them out to French common sense;…” — (He saves himself by not putting a great capital on apocalypse and on scriptures. But would apocalypse not be of the feminine, monsieur Laudet).

Elsewhere again:

… “but he knew and loved Christianity, more simply and less declamatorily, before having discovered Péguy’s Summa.”

Elsewhere finally:

“If he had said that, one could think of canonizing the author of the pamphlet.” — I do not know if one feels as I do the frightful game there is in this, the bourgeois game, the base gross joke with the sacred, this gesture of the Café du Commerce of slapping on the belly.

§ 302. — All these basenesses, all these familiarities are frightful. The most painful perhaps, in short those that wound us perhaps the most, me personally, and that is understood, are naturally those that refer directly to Joan of Arc: “As always, the disciples exaggerate the master’s doctrine; calm down the one of Coutances, counsel him to come back to a juster appreciation of things and chide him for having retained from the life of Joan of Arc only the manner of her judges.” I do not know if one feels the unfittingness, the baseness of thus directly plastering, of thus directly relating the Trial of Joan of Arc to our miserable quarrels. It is the procedure I find the basest there is in the world. It falls this time particularly badly. For generally the “judges” are not on our side. And particularly her judges and the manner of her judges are on a side that M. Laudet knows well. One would have to have very little history not to salute in the Doctors the representatives of the perpetual Intellectual Party, in the Doctors of Rouen the successors of the Jewish Doctors, the legitimate ancestors of our Intellectual Party. Must it be added that those of Rouen and elsewhere had received as supplement a strong contingent from the Sorbonne.

Elsewhere finally:

“No, certainly, it is not he. To begin with the article is not signed and never would Péguy, who draws his inspiration from chivalric Joan of Arc, consent to write a pamphlet he would not sign, and above all so hateful a pamphlet, he who never ceases rightly to preach ‘the law of love’; on the other hand Péguy is not reduced to finding hospitality for his prose only at Coutances in the Bulletin des Professeurs catholiques de l’Université which has 190 subscribers, among whom 33 firm subscribers have not yet paid their subscription.”

The chivalric Joan of Arc. — It is to wish to speak a soft language, it is to condemn oneself to speak both foolishly and forgeringly, — and falsely, — since it is to condemn oneself to speak an improper language, — to write the chivalric Joan of Arc. It is really to make on purpose the preliminary confusion of the planes of language. Either one means to say confusedly, one means to say softly the chivalric Joan of Arc in a vague sense, in a sense itself confused and soft of generous. And then it is an expression for an agricultural fair. And again one would not have suffered it at the prize-giving at Trie. And it is certainly in this sense that M. Laudet understands and says it. And then he cannot say anything. And he does not wish to say anything. And he would do better to be silent. And not to interpolate Joan of Arc in this debate. Or one means to speak precisely. And then one must pay perhaps still more attention. If one means to speak precisely chivalric means understood, eminent in the laws and acts of chivalry. Now we know that this great saint, without properly failing, without formally failing in the rules of chivalry, in the laws and acts of chivalry, moreover quite declining at this beginning of the fifteenth century, without placing herself outside of this declining chivalry had not really entered into it either. She was of the people and Christian and holy. She was very certainly in one sense a woman of arms; one could almost say a warrior. She was incontestably a very great military chief. One cannot say, unless one insists on it, unless one wishes to speak on purpose a very improper language, that she was properly a knight. Shall I say it, she was too profoundly of the people and still more too profoundly Christian and too profoundly holy. What there is of human honor and one could almost say of stoic one could almost say in this religion of honor that was chivalry, the laws and acts, the law and the gesture and the attitude of chivalry was not always in accord with a religion that placed Pride at the head of the Capital sins, that made of humility more perhaps than a virtue, its very mode and its rhythm, its secret taste, its outer and inner attitude, carnal and spiritual, its posture, its manners, its perpetual experience, almost its being. There was — one must doubtless perhaps not say throughout the whole Middle Ages, but throughout the whole reign of Feudalism — there was if I may say so and more than some contrariety and as a certain deep concurrence between the religion of honor and the religion of God. Let us be assured that Joan of Arc felt it very deeply. She was too deeply of the people and too deeply Christian and too great and too deeply holy not to feel it and to have felt it very deeply. She was a flower of French valor, of French charity, of French holiness. She was a flower of the Christian race and of the French race, a flower of Christendom, a flower of all the heroic virtues. One cannot say, unless one greatly forces the sense of words, or on the contrary unless one sets oneself again to speaking softly, that she was a flower of chivalry. A too deep vocation had marked her. Let us believe that a saint marked to that point for so much greatness and for so deep a life, marked to that point for all the virtues, marked, called to that point for heaven had measured in advance all that there is of precarious in an honor that is only of this world. She was on the point several times of entering into conflict with the laws of war, which were a particular case, but the most considerable part of the law of chivalry. She was on the point several times of entering formally into conflict with the laws of chivalry. She entered into them formally at least this time, this day when having taken a city she did not wish to let go a packet of French prisoners that the English had with them in the city, and that they wished and ought to take away, for they were theirs, as much as one can be to someone, by all the laws of war, since one had not bought them back from them, since one had not repaid them to them. But the merchants of the Temple also had paid the license, the merchants of the Temple also were in order. She did not encumber herself with all that. The idea of letting go all these poor people, from a city she had taken, was monstrous to her. She did not encumber herself with all her regulation. All this regulation, which she knew very well, which she knew perfectly, but which she knew as learned, after, which she did not know from childhood, from Domremy, all at once weighed nothing more in her hands in one of those fits of great charity such as were given only to the greatest saints. She entered into one of those great white angers, those great pure angers that made an army tremble. They yielded quickly, they yielded, they yielded, at once they yielded. They arranged all that. They made haste. They paid them to the English. They paid. They did not pay. Everyone had perfectly understood that those people would not go away from there. The English had however capitulated on this condition that they would go away safe with their goods. But the English preferred to go away. When she was there, they generally preferred to go away. It was a habit she had made them take. There were in those days in the kingdom of France certain hours that struck when the English felt the desire to go away. When she entered into those holy angers, it did not go well. The English were not at large. Nor the French moreover. She had those great angers which have been given only to the very great saints, who by the great anger of Jesus, articulated by the great anger of Jesus driving the merchants from the Temple rejoin in time the greatest angers of the greatest prophets of the greatest people of Israel.

These laws of chivalry, moreover from then on declining, were after all to repay her for it, as always happens when a being in his deep soul interiorly fails in respect for a law. Laws always know when one fails them, were it in the deepest of the heart. And it is what they perforce pardon least. It is what they certainly pardon least. This deep wound, this secret wound, ignored by all, that they have seen. Never was it covered, — and one may say it is one of the conditions, that it is perhaps the temporal condition, I mean the condition of time and world, as we say of milieu where her mission was called to be produced, which removing from her all the guarantees of ordinary war, leaving her, making her exposed to the extreme risks of war, and above all to the moreover extraordinary risks of war, gave her mission, the accomplishment of her mission, this unique greatness of risk, of exposure to danger, — never was she really covered by the laws of chivalry. It is this that gave a unique price to her heroic Virtues. Here is what I mean to say. One must well see, one must measure this heroic ascension of holiness, one must well measure exactly to what degree of holiness, to what degree of heroism she had arrived and constantly held. Whatever the forces of the living sources, whatever the inventions and the perpetual re-springings and springings, whatever the inexhaustible novelties of grace there is together undeniably a certain technique, a certain almost professional hierarchic season, an armature and ossature almost of trade, a certain holy processional hierarchy of heroic Virtue and of holiness. There are degrees that are the very degrees of the Throne. At the first degree Joan of Arc had in their fullness the virtues of war, which are not small. I mean very expressly by that and very properly that she entered into the game of war and into the risk of war fully, without any restriction, without any intervention, without any intercalation of proper divine protection. She obeyed, she accomplished a proper divine mission in a human world without having touched a corresponding proper divine protection. She had received the order; she had received the vocation; she had received the mission. She obeyed, she executed the order; she answered the vocation; she accomplished her mission. She proceeded to the execution, to the accomplishment of her mission in a hard (and tender) humanity, in a world, in a hard and tender Christendom, herself sweet and firm, strong, sweet, sometimes apparently hard. Apparently rough. During her whole mission she received counsel-assistance, we know it, by the assistance and the constantly renewed, constantly present counsel of her voices. By that sort of counsel-assistance, almost feudal, perpetually renewed, perpetually present. During her whole mission, and I count in it her captivity, whatever absences she may have had to suffer there, and her death. During her whole mission and within it during her captivity she received constant counsel-assistance from her voices and an abundance of graces of which we can have no idea. The day of her death she received a grace that was never perhaps given, thus and to this point, to any other saint, so that the day of her death was already no longer for her the last day of the life of this earth but literally really already the first day of her eternal life. But finally with this mission, with this vocation, with all these graces, with all these gifts, with this constant presence of counsel she never received either the grace, or the gift, or the counsel, or any favor of being invulnerable. She made war exposed to all the accidents of war. She made like everyone a war like everyone. Less happy than so many saints, less happy than so many prophets even and than so many chiefs of the people of Israel the angels who assisted her with their counsels, or the saints, did not fight at her side. Never did the word of Jesus: Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, who would at once give me more than twelve legions of angels? How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must come to pass? fulfill itself as fully in a saint and we rejoin here this vocation, this unique election, this unique imitation by which one can say that of all the women saints she was the one to whom certainly it was given that her life and her Passion and her death should be imitated most closely on the life and the Passion and the death of Jesus.

I well know that I shall never be able to put in the Mystères so many greatnesses. I would here only like to mark some essential articulations. If I could some day write a life of Joan of Arc in fifty and some pages, or again, what would be better, in two or three hundred lines, I would try to mark some essential articulations. I would try to show I do not say in a certain parallel but in a certain imitation how she was the most eminent and the most faithful and the most approached of all the imitations of Jesus Christ. I shall show, — but who already does not see it, — how this fidelity is faithful, follows down into the detail.

Twelve legions of angels. She did not ask them either. She never asked them. This counsel, that she had, this counsel that she had, was as the consequence, as the natural sequel of the order, of the vocation, as the natural, supernatural-natural sequel, coming from the same voices, borne by the same ministry, this counsel that she had, that she had, almost familiarly so to speak, for her use like the daily prayer, this counsel-use like the morning and evening prayer she often (re)asked it. Direct supernatural war-aids, physical, an assistance of war, supernatural war-troops which she did not have, she never asked them.

One even sees very well by the texts that the idea would not have come to her for a single instant to ask them. A noble discretion of a saint, a noble discretion of a Frenchwoman almost equally prevented her. As much as she insisted for counsel, which she claimed one may almost say as a right, since God had sent her on this extraordinary mission, so much one sees well that she has not the idea that she has to ask for a directly military help, a properly military help, directly physical. She knew perfectly in what conditions of holiness she was operating. And that she had received not only the hardest ordeal, the hardest mission, but also the most rigorously, the most exactly human ordeal, mission.

One cannot too much repeat it and one would have to be able to mark it. Called by a divine vocation in human land, sent on a divine mission in human land not only did she never operate, but she never asked to operate, she never prayed to operate except by human means. Living in this perpetual miracle of being assisted by proper voices, of receiving constantly a proper counsel-assistance from voices that were so to speak particularly and properly attached to her, personally assigned, she never asked a help one may say physical-supernatural, direct-supernatural, directly-military-supernatural. She never asked that walls fall down at the sound of trumpets. And yet she knew her sacred history. It is a point one cannot too much consider, which will be our cardinal point, with a story from Joinville, when we try to determine, to draw up a geographical and geological map of the theory of miracle.

A king of her time, — was it not a king of England, — did not wish to go to the rescue of his son, engaged in a bad battle, because the child had to win his knightly spurs. It seems that never did the king of heaven so expressly wish as in the person of this great saint that one of his daughters should herself win the palms of martyrdom.

She knew it. Not only was she not guaranteed, was she not insured against sickness and against wound and against military defeat but she knew that she was not insured against sickness and against wound and against military defeat. She fought then exactly in ordinary conditions and so to speak in the ordinary statute. One saw well at Orléans and at Paris that she was not insured against the wound. One saw well at Compiègne that she was not insured against capture. One saw well at Rouen that she was not insured against death.

When people asked her for miracles so to speak ordinary, miracles of sickness, which are the most ordinary, she at once recused herself, with a confusion of humility, or at the same time with good humor, she recused herself quickly, arguing her incompetence, falling back on her proper mission, on her vocation, indicating, recommending to them only to pray. She had come only to deliver the kingdom of France. She did not know how to heal that child, that little boy and that little girl. This saint who had received the greatest commandment ever given to a saint, who had been called for the greatest vocation, who had been sent on the greatest mission not only never asked for herself an ordinary physical miracle but when one asked of her, that is to say exactly when one asked her to ask, as one was accustomed to asking the saints, quickly she recused herself, almost slipping behind her incompetence. She did not know. She had not been sent for that.

She accomplished a divine task by simply human means. She executed a divine order by strictly human means. She answered a divine vocation by rigorously human means, by a work, by a military war, by operations, by efforts exactly human. She accomplished a divine mission by simply human means. It is this that gives her a place apart, a quite eminent place in the hierarchy of holinesses.

Let us note again, let us note moreover that the matter in which this holiness was to exercise itself was the most extraordinary, the most out of the order, habitual, one could almost say the most foreign to the habitual matters of holiness. And even the most contrary and inimical to the habitual matters of holiness. Above all she was truly sent on an extraordinary mission. By these two commandments she has a unique place in the hierarchy of holinesses, she is holy and blessed among all women saints and together by the first she is a woman among all women saints.

For if on the other hand one wishes to consider her no longer at her rank of holiness but at her rank of humanity, who does not see at once that she is in this order a unique woman. A unique being. For if one wishes she is of the race of saints, and if one wishes she is of the race of heroes. Coming from God and returning to God and receiving constantly counsel-assistance from her voices through her whole being she is a saint. She is of the race of saints. But in this hard humanity of the fifteenth century and of all centuries accomplishing by purely human means such a gathering of purely human exploits of a purely human war, of a whole purely human action by all her so to speak external action, by all her body-and-soul engagement in the military action, in a whole action of war, by all her condition, by all her being of action she is a hero, she is of the race of heroes.

Now not only is the race of heroes and the race of saints not the same. But these are two races little or badly akin. One could almost say which do not love each other, which do not love to consort together, which are embarrassed to be together. There is one knows not what of profound and which would need to be deepened by which the race of heroes and the race of saints have one knows not what deep contrariety. There are perhaps not two races of men that are so profoundly foreign to each other, so distant from each other, so contrary to each other as the race of heroes and the race of saints. One would no doubt discover that this deep contrariety only translates, but in a form, in its form perhaps the most acute, in its eminent form, this deep, this eternal contrariety of the temporal and the eternal.

Now Joan of Arc, precisely because she exercised her holiness in purely human ordeals by purely human means, precisely because she had remained entirely vulnerable militarily, vulnerable to sickness, vulnerable to the wound, vulnerable to capture, vulnerable to death, vulnerable to defeat and to every defeat, exposed in her fullness like an antique hero to every adventure of war she is of the race of heroes as she is of the race of saints. And as in the race of saints she is both a saint among all women saints and a woman among all women saints, so, parallelly so in the race of heroes she is a hero among all and a woman. She is no less eminent in the heroic hierarchy than in the sacred hierarchy. And thus she is at a unique point of intersection in the history of humanity. In her join two races that join nowhere else. By a unique re-crossing of these two races, by an election, by a unique vocation in the history of the world she is at once a saint among all heroes, heroic among all women saints.

Now at the second degree in this very war that we call ordinary and that we say she made ordinary, herself ordinary, in reality we know well that it was an extraordinary war, but extraordinary on the contrary, in the other sense, in the contrary sense, in the sense of risk and of an extraordinary adventure and danger. For she was not “chivalric” and we must thank M. Laudet for having set us on the way to these few precisions. To making these few precisions. She was never really covered by the law of chivalry. In short by what remained in her time of the law of chivalry. Not only, for a saint, did she make war. Not only did she make an ordinary war. But this ordinary war she made it not covered by the ordinary protections of war. In short by the little law of war that still existed. Or that already existed. She was then uncovered at the second degree. To defend herself against the usage of war she had only the usage of war. To defend herself against the abuse of war she had nothing, since being a saint she naturally did not have, she ought not, she could not have the abuse of war. Against the usage of war she had only an ordinary cuirass, a cuirass like everyone. A cuirass of the beginning of the fifteenth century, monsieur Le Grix. Every temporal arrow could wound her. One saw it well at Orléans. One saw it well at Paris. Every temporal hand could seize her at the shoulder and make her fall from her horse. One saw it well at Compiègne. Every temporal hand could build for her the apparatus of her death. One saw it well at Rouen. But this still was only at the first degree. In the usage of war she was not covered. In the abuse of war at the second degree she was not covered. The English never ceased to assail her with the basest insults. In short, one saw it well at Compiègne and at Arras and at the donjon of Crotoy and at Rouen. For taken prisoner of war she was judged as prisoner of the Church or in short, in whatever way one turns the difficulty, taken prisoner of war she was kept prisoner of war and in war-prison and at the same time judged as Church-accused. That is to say that in whatever way one turns the difficulty she was diverted, one committed in her, toward her and in her person, an embezzlement of captivity.

Thus she was not covered by any immunity; neither in a human action by a divine immunity, by an immunity of a saint; nor in the war by an immunity of a saint nor by an immunity of a knight. Nor by a juridical immunity.

§ 303. — “and above all so hateful a pamphlet, he who never ceases rightly to preach ‘the law of love’”; — Monsieur Laudet you know very well that I do not preach. Where would my magisterium be. I write. That is already much. Not everyone could say as much.

So hateful a pamphlet. — I assure you, monsieur Laudet, that the announcement is not hateful. I avow that it is frenzied. In a certain sense. That it lets nothing pass. I avow that it is pushed to the bottom. But it is not hateful. I am in no way hateful. I am perhaps hating. It is quite another thing, it is quite another sin. Hating no more resembles hateful than proud and angry resemble envious, resemble conceited and vain. In sin too there are races. And races doubtless no less irreducible among themselves. I know more than enough that I have never had to do with the fourth, — (it is not in my nature), — and that I have unfortunately had to do with the sixth.

For the rest if M. Laudet wishes to announce that I am a sinner, he unfortunately teaches me nothing (new) and teaches nothing (new) to anyone. But unfortunately we are all in this state. All, in short one knows what I mean. All even the saints. Only let M. Laudet not meddle in writing my Confessions. They would perhaps be less well done than when I write them myself.

But if from the fact that I am a sinner M. Laudet wishes to conclude that I am incompetent in matters of Christendom, nego consequentiam, I deny the consequence. And even in matter of holiness. For it is all one. And M. Laudet must be himself indeed quite incompetent in matter of Christendom and within in matter of holiness not to see both his own incompetence and my competence.

I often regret not having been able to publish at once this Dialogue de l’histoire et de l’âme charnelle (Dialogue of history and the carnal soul) that I wrote just two years ago and which set me on the road of the Mystères de Jeanne d’Arc. The center of this dialogue was precisely consecrated to this mysterious binding of the temporal and the eternal, of the hero and the saint, of the sinner and the saint. To this contrariety of binding. Or rather it was this very binding. The sinner and sin are an essential piece of Christianity, an essential piece of the cardinal Christian articulation. The sinner and the saint are two essential complementary pieces, mutually complementary, which play one upon the other, and whose articulation one upon the other makes the whole secret of Christendom.

§ 304. — … “who draws his inspiration,” he says, “from chivalric Joan of Arc, …” — Not only is it the improper word that comes naturally to him, the word that plays on several confused planes of language, but particularly among all improprieties, among all improprietations the word that comes naturally to him in matter of Christendom is the pagan word. S’inspire (Draws inspiration). One draws inspiration from the Muses, monsieur Laudet, we do not draw inspiration from the saints. The binding of sinners to saints, must I tell you again, is not a binding of inspiration. It is a binding of communion. What makes one be or not be of Christendom, is not, is in no way, — (one understands me well), — that one is more or less a sinner. It is quite another question, it is an infinitely other debate. The discrimination is quite other. The sinner is of Christendom. The sinner can make the best prayer. Perhaps no one is as deeply of Christendom as Villon. And no prayer, I say no prayer of a saint, surpasses the Ballade that he made at the request of his mother to pray to Our Lady. The sinner is an integral part, an integral piece of the mechanism of Christendom. The sinner is at the very heart of Christendom.

The question of being or not being a sinner, or rather the question of being more or less a sinner, — (everyone is a sinner), — has absolutely nothing in common, has so to speak absolutely no point of contact with the question of being more or less Christian, and of being Christian or not being so. It is quite another question, an infinitely other debate. And it is one of the gravest misreadings one can commit in matter of Christendom to confuse them, one of those that best, and most instantaneously, mark, that one does not understand it, that one is not in it, that one does not know what one is talking about. That one is totally incompetent in it. That one is foreign to it. No one on the contrary is less foreign, no one is as competent as Villon in matter of Christendom. No one is as competent as the sinner in matter of Christendom. No one, unless it be the saint. And in principle it is the same man. I was citing just now, I was bringing in the Prayer, the Ballade he made at the request of his mother to pray to Our Lady. Why have I not cited the ritual prayer itself, the liturgical prayer that we all say, sinners and saints confounded, and which expressly foresees that we are sinners, pro nobis peccatoribus.

The sinner and the saint are two parts one may say equally integral, two pieces equally integral of the mechanism of Christendom. They are one and the other together two pieces equally indispensable one to the other, two mutually complementary pieces. They are one and the other together the two complementary pieces non-interchangeable and together interchangeable of a unique mechanism that is the mechanism of Christendom. Of a mechanism that will never be dismantled. But finally I have proposed myself precisely to deepen this cardinal binding in this Dialogue de l’histoire et de l’âme charnelle.

He who is not Christian on the contrary, he who is not competent in Christendom, in matter of Christendom, he who is foreign is on the contrary he who is not a sinner, literally he who commits no sin. Who cannot commit any sin. Literally he who is a sinner, he who commits a sin is already Christian, is in this very fact Christian. One could almost say is a good Christian.

Ce non obstant qu’oncqnes rien ne valus. Les biens de vous, ma dame & ma maistresse. Sont trop plus grans que ne suis pécheresse, Sans lesquelz biens ame ne peut merir N’auoir les cieulx. je n’en suis iungleresse. En ceste foy ie vueil viure & mourir.

[Notwithstanding that I have never been worth anything. Your goods, my lady and my mistress, are far greater than I am a sinful woman, without which goods no soul can deserve nor have the heavens. I am no juggler about it. In this faith I wish to live and die.]

The sinner, together with the saint, enters into the system, is of the system of Christendom.

He who does not enter into the system, he who does not give his hand, it is he who is not Christian, it is he who has no competence in matter of Christendom. It is he who is a stranger. The sinner extends his hand to the saint, gives his hand to the saint, since the saint gives his hand to the sinner. And all together, the one by the other, the one drawing the other, they go back up to Jesus, they make a chain that goes back up to Jesus, a chain with unloosable fingers. He who is not Christian, he who has no competence in Christianity, in Christendom, in matter of Christendom is he who does not give his hand. Little matters what he then does with this hand. When a man can accomplish the highest action in the world without having been steeped in grace, that man is a stoic, he is not a Christian. When a man can commit the basest action in the world precisely without committing a sin, that man is not a Christian. The Christian is not defined by the water-mark, but by communion. One is not Christian because one is at a certain level, moral, intellectual, even spiritual. One is Christian because one is of a certain going-up race, of a certain mystical race, of a certain spiritual and carnal, temporal and eternal race, of a certain blood. This cardinal classification is not made horizontally but vertically.

And together if I may say so his fidelity as faithful is one of limits. Temporal limits proceeding themselves certainly from spiritual limits. At the end of his life ne fuge mie (do not flee at all); — he could have been there. It depended only on him to be there. His fidelity as liegeman and his fidelity as vassal had limited itself to one, to the first of the two crusades. To the one that did not entail what he himself wishes to have been a martyrdom. CXLIV, 734. ”… I was greatly pressed by the king of France and the king of Navarre to take the cross.” And we, we have reasons to believe, monsieur Laudet, that if we had been created in the first and even in the second half of the thirteenth century, monsieur Le Grix, and if we had been greatly pressed for it by the king of France and by the king of Navarre we would have been among those who set off for the second time, we would have been among those who for the second time left Lozère and even Palaiseau. What I answered him at length to the king of France and the king of Navarre, 735. “To this I answered that, while I had been in the service of God and the king overseas, and since I came back from there, the sergeants of the king of France and the king of Navarre had destroyed my people and impoverished them; so that there would never be an hour when I and they would not be the worse for it. And so I said this, that if I wished to act there to God’s pleasure, that I would remain here to aid and defend my people; for if I put my body in the adventure of the pilgrimage of the cross, where I saw quite clearly that this would be to the harm and damage of my people, I would anger God in it, who put his body to save his people.

736. I understood that all those committed mortal sin who counseled him the journey, because at the point when he was in France, the whole realm was in good peace within itself and with all its neighbors; nor ever since he departed has the state of the realm done other than worsen.

737. Great sin did those commit who counseled him the journey, in the great weakness in which his body was; for he could not bear either to be carried or to ride. His weakness was so great, that he suffered me to carry him from the lodging of the count of Auxerre, where I took leave of him, as far as the Cordeliers, between my arms. And so, weak as he was, if he had remained in France, he could still have lived long enough, and done much of good and good works.”

Weak as he was he let his king depart and remained in his seneschalship of Champagne. What matter, it is not what we ask of him. What we ask of him, is not so much that fidelity, the fidelity of the liegeman and the fidelity of the faithful. It would have been better that he had it, but in short he did not have it. Or in short he did not have it beyond a certain limit. What we ask of him, what is spoken of, uniquely, is the fidelity of the chronicler, is that he sovereignly, uniquely, kept this unique fidelity of the chronicler and the witness. This unique fidelity of the portrait. Is that he left us this unique portrait that none shall steal. For that we shall let everything pass. Others, — (enough others?) — in short others were there to accompany, others accompanied the king in this crusade of misery and martyrdom. He alone, having accompanied the king before the Church inquiry ten, twelve and twenty and twenty-five years after his death, he alone having accompanied with others the king, the memory of the king, the cause of the king before a Church inquiry he alone almost without any other he alone and his portrait, he alone and his chronicle, he alone and his historical testimony will accompany him, what am I saying will accompany him, will carry him into all the temporal centuries down to the judgment. And it is for that that we will pardon him everything.

Weak as he was he let his king depart, he Joinville who in 1315, at ninety-one years, forty-five years after the death of the saint king wrote to his third successor Louis X le Hutin, — (and after the juristic horrors of the reign of Philip the Fair), — a letter bearing promise that he would rejoin him soon with his men, marching against the Flemish. At the end of his life ne fuge mie. What matter. What does it matter to us. He has left us a Saint Louis.

He had the carnal heart. That is to say that he loved too much the castle of Joinville. He loved too much the castle of his fathers. 122… “And while I was going to Bléhecourt and to Saint-Urbain, I never wished to turn my eyes back toward Joinville, lest the heart should soften in me for the fine castle I was leaving and for my two children.” What matter. What does it matter to us. He has left us a Saint Louis. Others departed with the king. Others accompanied the king. Others saw the king die. What does it matter to us. It is he however, it is he alone, it is all the same he who has left us the dying king. — “and then it came to pass that the crusade was of small accomplishment.

738. Of the journey he made to Tunis I will recount nor say nothing, because I was not there, thank God! nor will I say anything nor put anything in my book of which I am not certain. So we will speak of our holy king without more,…”

He was not there, thank God. It is however he who has left us the portrait of it, the eternal testimony. It is he, no other, not one of those who were there, not one of those who were there, who has made for us, who has bequeathed to us this dying Saint Louis, who for the temporal eternity of history has represented for us the death of Saint Louis. It is by him, by no other, not by one of those who were there that Saint Louis dying, that the death of Saint Louis will live in the ages. There is a special grace for the chronicler. Let him only have paid this grace, let him have redeemed this grace by attaching himself to his model, by attaching himself to his chronicle, by remaining faithful to his model, by remaining faithful to his chronicle with an entire attachment, with an entire fidelity, with an absolutely pure, proper attachment, with a fidelity absolutely pure of chronicler. There is a proper destination. I would dare say that there is a proper vocation. He is rewarded enough in time and he is overwhelmed with reward and to infinity beyond what he is worth if his name remains affixed as a signature to the name of his model, if this chronicle remains affixed in time to this being, if in the shadow of his model he too remains as a donor. In a corner of the picture at once donor and painter a kneeling donor. Thus in this portrait of a saint, in this chronicle, in this life of a unique saint Joinville seneschal of Champagne, Christian of the ordinary species, is constantly present, donor and painter, in the shadow and in the radiance of this great saint, in the shadow of Saint Louis. At the end of his life ne fuge mie. Here is how he was not there. … “So we will speak of our holy king without more, and will say thus, that after he had arrived at Tunis before the castle of Carthage, a sickness took him of the flux of the belly (and Philippe, his eldest son, was sick with quartan fever, with the flux of the belly that the king had), with which he took to his bed, and felt well that he must soon pass from this world to the other.”

and felt well that he must soon pass from this world to the other. There is how he was not there. 739. “Then he called my lord Philippe his son, and commanded him to keep, as if by testament, all the teachings that he left to him, which are written down in French, which teachings the king wrote with his holy hand, so it is said.”

Then follow the teachings, which are an admirable monument, the only monument perhaps that equals certain words of Joan of Arc: (it is like a Decalogue of a king): Covet not from upon thy people, nor charge it with toll nor with tallage, save it be for the great necessity.

Covet not from upon thy people: there is how he was not there. 755. “When the good king had taught his son my lord Philippe, the infirmity he had began to increase greatly, and he asked for the sacraments of holy Church, and had them in healthy thought and in right understanding, so it appeared: for when he was being anointed and the seven psalms were being said, he said the verses on his part.

756. And I heard tell of my lord the count of Alençon, his son, that, when he approached death, he called upon the saints to aid and succor him, and likewise my lord saint Jacques, in saying his prayer, which begins: Esto, Domine; that is to say: ‘God, be the sanctifier and guard of your people.’ My lord saint Denis of France he called then to his aid, in saying his prayer which is as much as to say ‘Lord God, grant us that we may despise the prosperity of this world, and that we may not fear any adversity.’

757. And I heard then my lord of Alençon say (whom God absolve!) that his father then called upon my lady saint Geneviève. After, the holy king had himself laid down on a bed covered with ashes, and put his hands upon his breast, and looking toward heaven rendered to our Creator his spirit, in that very hour in which the Son of God died for the salvation of the world on the cross.

758. A piteous thing and worthy to be wept is the passing of this holy prince, who so saintly and loyally kept his realm, and who made so many fine alms, and who placed there so many fine institutions. And just as the writer who has made his book illuminates it with gold and azure, so did the said king illuminate his realm with fine abbeys that he made there, and with the great quantity of houses of God and of houses of the Preachers, of the Cordeliers and of the other religions which are above named.

759. The morrow of the feast of saint Bartholomew the apostle, passed from this world the good king Louis, in the year of the incarnation of Our Lord, the year of grace one thousand CC.LXX, and his bones were kept in a casket and brought and buried at Saint-Denis in France, there where he had chosen his sepulture, in which place he was buried, where God has since done many a fine miracle for him, through his deserts.”

There is how he was not there. So what does it matter to us. That is not what we ask of him. What does it matter to us. What we ask of him, is this testimony, is this singular presence of the chronicler who several times passed in presence the temporal presence itself. He does not want to take us by surprise. What is true. Joinville carried the historical methods. That proves that he is no dissipator of anything. He has seen what he has seen. But he has not seen what he has not seen. He does not hide it from us in his conclusion. 768. “I make known to all that I have here put a great part of the deeds of our holy king aforesaid, which I saw and heard, and a great part of his deeds that I have found, which are in a romance, which I have had written in this book. And these things I remind you of, so that those who shall hear this book may firmly believe in what the book says that I have orally seen and heard; and as for the other things that are written there, I do not testify to you that they be true, because I have neither seen nor heard them.

769. This was written in the year of grace one thousand CCC and IX, in the month of October.”

It was therefore thirty-nine years and some months after the death and the last event of the matter of his chronicle. But we, we wish only to retain his purpose, the proposition of his undertaking. 1. “To his good lord Louis, son of the king of France, by the grace of God king of Navarre, of Champagne and of Brie count palatine, John, lord of Joinville, his seneschal of Champagne, greeting and love and honor, and his service prepared.

2. Dear sire, I make known to you that my lady the queen your mother, who loved me much (to whom may God grant good mercy!), prayed me as earnestly as she could, that I should have made for her a book of the holy words and of the good deeds of our king saint Louis; and I had it in covenant with her,…”

3. “At the beginning of the first book. In the name of God almighty, I John lord of Joinville, seneschal of Champagne, have written the life of our holy king Louis, that which I saw and heard during the space of six years, that I was in his company on the pilgrimage overseas, and after we returned.”

4. “After this, by the procurement of the king of France and by the commandment of the apostle, came the archbishop of Rouen and brother Jean de Samois, who was afterwards bishop; they came to Saint-Denis in France, and there remained a long time to inquire about the life, the works and the miracles of the holy king; and word was sent to me that I should go to them, and they kept me two days. And after they had inquired of me and of others; that which they had found was carried to the court of Rome; and diligently the apostle and the cardinals saw what was brought to them; and according to what they saw, they did him right and placed him in the number of the confessors.”

§ 305. — For me I put nothing above the chronicler, — in the order of relation, of course. — It is a proper office. It is a proper order of fidelity. It is perhaps the order of fidelity in which I feel well that I shall never be unfaithful. I am incapable of lying in writing. My friends know it well. My enemies somewhat suspect it. It is a veritable infirmity that I have. Orally I am still more or less capable of lying like everyone. But there must be in the pen of Blanzy’s and in the ink of Chiné’s or Bourgeois’s a singular virtue. As soon as I set my hand to the pen, as that youth said, I do not say that I no longer wish, I say that I can no longer lie. It is a very well-known phenomenon. And it is a virtue infinitely the best guarded of all.

For me I feel myself capable of many weaknesses, and perhaps of all weaknesses in certain orders, in several orders, in many orders. There is but one weakness from which I feel absolutely guaranteed. I am at an age when a man seriously tried feels capable of so many weaknesses. It is not with impunity that one crosses life. And such a life. It is in books that ordeals harden a man, firm him up. But there is only one weakness from which I feel absolutely guaranteed. It is to weaken in some trait or other of some portrait I have undertaken of a bandit or of a saint, — or of an event, — or of a people. It is a vice that I have. It is more solid than a virtue. It is what has led me into this sort of life, from which I shall not depart. People will have to get used to it. I myself am quite used to it.

“who draws his inspiration from chivalric Joan of Arc…” monsieur Laudet you know very well that we are nothing in comparison with these great saints, as we are nothing in comparison with the great heroes. May we be only, may we be sometimes their apparitors and their ushers. May we be the one who happens to be just there to open this door. But it was precisely the door that was wanted. May we be the one who sweeps the trash from the street.

To draw inspiration from. Let us not confuse the orders of magnitude. These great saints are if I may say so like Napoléons in their order, like the Napoléons of holiness. Am I also, in the temporal, to imitate Napoléon.

If we could be only a good servant, serviens, a sergeant, some servant of arms, a faithful follower. For me I would be paid enough if it were said, the Mysteries of Joan of Arc, by the loyal servant.

§ 306. — After that, am I going to come back to a debate henceforth exhausted, to bore M. Le Grix. I cannot however leave Joinville without taking note in the division of the public and the private of the division that Joinville himself makes of all his chronicle. ”… and by the help of God the book is settled into two parts. The first part shows how he governed himself all his time according to God and according to the Church, and to the profit of his realm. The second part of the book speaks of his great chivalries and of his great deeds of arms.

3. Sire, — (he continues to address the same prince, son of the king), — because it is written: ‘Do first that which appertains to God, and he will set right for thee all thy other businesses,’ I have first of all had written what appertains to the three things above said, that is to say what appertains to the profit of souls and of bodies, and what appertains to the government of the people.

4. And these other things I have also had written to the honor of the true holy body, because by these things above said one will be able to see quite clearly that never did a layman of our time live so holily all his time, from the beginning of his reign to the end of his life. At the end of his life ne fuge mie; but the heart, Pierre d’Alençon, his son, was there (who loved me much), who recorded to me the beautiful end which he made, which you will find written at the end of this book.

5. The second book will speak to you of his great chivalries and of his great boldnesses, which are such that I saw him four times put his body in adventure of death, as you will hear hereafter, to spare the damage of his people.”

And at the beginning of the first book. 19. “In the name of God almighty, I John lord of Joinville, seneschal of Champagne, have written the life of our holy king Louis, that which I saw and heard during the space of six years, that I was in his company on the pilgrimage overseas, and after we returned. And before I tell you of his great deeds and of his chivalry, I will tell you what I saw and heard of his holy words and of his good teachings, so that they may be found one after the other to edify those who shall hear them.”

And at the beginning of the second book. 68. “In the name of God almighty, we have here above written part of the good words and good teachings of our holy king Louis, so that those who shall hear them may find them the ones after the others, by which they may the better make their profit of them than if they were written among his deeds. And here after we shall begin of his deeds, in the name of God and in the name of him.

69. Just as I heard him say, he was born the day of saint Mark the evangelist after Easter.”

§ 307. — And again, and finally, — if there can be a finally, — M. Le Grix, — since one wishes him to be, — M. Le Grix does he still know enough of the finest Latin there is to understand the different degrees of this invocation going-up and each time descending by one degree:

Per mysterium sanctae Incarnationis tuae, libera nos, Jesu;

[By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation, deliver us, O Jesus]

No. I am so ashamed. I have such a feeling of my baseness in citing, in copying these ritual texts, these liturgical texts to finish triumphing in these miserable quarrels that I have not the heart to invoke them here in their entirety, in their fullness, in this sort of perpetual ascension gradually falling back, gradually descending. I will only cite, I will only produce the frontons of them. I will not put in the rising columns. The five parallel frontons in height successively descending. I have said the first. I leave the first. Then:

Per nativitatem tuam; [By thy nativity]

Per infantiam tuam; [By thy infancy]

Per divinissimam vitam tuam; [By thy most divine life]

Per labores tuos. [By thy labors]

It is even remarkable, — if it is permitted here to speak so, — how much the word labores, at least in the Latin, in its full Latin sense well joined, — I do not engage myself in the Greek; — how, how much it just covers; how it well gathers at this moment, at this point all the anterior and all the ulterior, how it well joins all the anterior and all the ulterior, all the anterior to all the ulterior. Placed at the accomplishment, at the gathering of all life. Placed at the crowning of the private labors. Placed at the beginning of the public labors:

Per agoniam et passionem tuam; [By thy agony and passion]

Per crucem et derelictionem tuam; [By thy cross and dereliction]

Per languores tuos; [By thy languors]

Per mortem et sepulturam tuam. [By thy death and burial]

Then comes the resurrection and the ascension and the joys and the glory.

§ 308. — Per derelictionem tuam. — We invoke Jesus by his being-forsaken.

§ 309. — Per labores tuos, — it is a new example, — after so many others I love to give in conversation, — of that sort of singular affinity there is between Latin and ritual thought, between Latin and the proper resonance of the sacred word itself. It is not the first time that a Latin text, that a word suddenly gives the impression, gives the seizure, that it suddenly flowers, that it abruptly fills the rite, that it is the only voice that could thus keep for all times the eternal word. That it is a singular voice, a (singularly) predestined voice, a voice itself called, vox vocata. An elect voice. A voice in which the word of God is accomplished, attains its eternal expression, one could almost say its just tone, its proper expression. Its first expression. The tone, the expression that it awaited. I unfortunately do not understand it in Hebrew. But I have friends who understand it there. And I hear them understanding it. It has there a gravity as of a judge and of one who tries. The word of God is more intelligent in Greek. More Platonic. And more philosophical. Perhaps it was to be expected. But in Latin it is eternal.

Per gaudia tua [By thy joys], — there is a second sacred language, there is a second affinity and perhaps a first. There would be a second and perhaps a first language, and even a first language that would keep intact, that would just clothe the word of God.

Let us not doubt of it. There is also an election of French. Who doubts it on reading a page of the Procès de Jeanne d’Arc. And who doubts it on reading a page of Joinville. One had only to keep the force of Latin. One suffers when one reads any translation whatever of the Gospels into French. And generally of all the Latin sacred texts and of all the ritual texts, of all the liturgical texts in the catechisms and in the missals in two columns. It is a perpetual weakening. It resembles the two columns that I will make at the end for M. Laudet. The poor people, one feels they are perpetually afraid of their text. And with the other hand they are afraid of this admirable French of which they make, one wonders how, for example, one must see it to believe it, and to render account of it, of which they make an instrument of bending, of weakening. Likewise they make a text of which there is no need to be afraid. There would have to be a great writer, that is to say one who writes simply, who would give us one day a French version of Matthew and of Mark and of Luke and of John, by proposing himself uniquely to keep the vigor and the fullness of the Vulgate, this sort of full plane; this grave authority; this rightness-vigor; this just plenitude; this wheat and this cluster; this originary, this hard and tender Vulgate. There would have to be a writer, there would have to be a Frenchman who would not blush at the noble Latin boldnesses.

Sunt verba et voces. Neque ideo neglegenda (There are words and voices. Nor for that should they be neglected). What is more important than the word. Singular destination. Preparation of eight and ten centuries. But what is it. The hard Sabine, Alban laborer, — (Rome is subject of Alba), — the brigand and the shepherd who were forging this language did not know for what God they were working. When they said via, the one that carries, the way, for carts. When they said veritas, truth. When they said vita, life. When they said crux, the gibbet of torture. They did not know. They believed they were serving Vertumnus and Pomona, and these Latin gods more laborer-like and more familiar, more peasant, more somber and more gardener, smaller, more wicked too, more underhand than the fine young men gods of Greece. They did not know that they were serving the God who was coming, and that Rome one day would become Roman.

I was thinking of it in reading the French version of these litanies. I do not know if it is authoritative. Here was the Latin starting-point. Never progression, never ascension was so marked. This one is in four terms. In the Latin:

Per Resurrectionem tuam; [By thy Resurrection]

Per Ascensionem tuam; [By thy Ascension]

Per gaudia tua; [By thy joys]

Per gloriam tuam. [By thy glory]

One had the good fortune, to translate, that the four Latin words had precisely four direct sons, who were not the four Aymon sons, but four strong French sons well issued from their father. In reality one had the same four words in the French as one had in the Latin. One had even this unhoped-for luck, — and one which happens happily much more often than one thinks, — that two at least of the French words sounded fuller, more raw, broader, were shorter than the Latin words their fathers. The word joies above all prevailed over the word gaudia. Do you know what they did. They did not treat these litanies any better than they treated this history we know according to four versions, since precisely we know it according to Matthew, and according to Mark, and according to Luke, and according to John. They put:

Par votre Résurrection [By your Resurrection];

Par votre Ascension [By your Ascension];

Par vos saintes joies [By your holy joys];

Par votre gloire [By your glory].

Well yes, you have understood. Everything falls to the ground. The tone is no longer there. Holy joys are not joys. Everything is out of tune. Everything is disconcerted. This high rising architecture of the Ascension is no more. A word has broken everything; placed thus. And a word that it was so easy not to put, since there was nothing in the Latin there. But there. They live in dread of their text. This gaudia above all frightened them. Just think. If one were to understand, if one were to believe that the joys of Jesus in heaven are joys quite tranquilly, well, joys purely and simply, joys in short. Then quickly to stifle the burst of this voice they stuff in their sacristy epithet. The bottom of their fear, is that one should take at his word the word of God. The bottom of their thought, is that they wish to believe that heaven is offices where they would be bored, I mean where one is bored out of virtue, as they are already bored in them, when they go to them, not to heaven, to the offices. Gaudia. Joys. What does this mean. It is too short a word. It is a suspect word. So they weaken, they tepidify, they soften. They blunt these rough angles.

The hard Latin angles.

By means of which all the high and noble rising of the ascension, all this high and noble, all this firm architecture of the heart falls. And there remain alas only the old faded elegances of the ancient Latin versions. From a word placed out of its place let us learn the power. All this gradation, all this graduation collapses. It was so simple to put, to transmit, to transcribe. It was too simple:

Par votre Résurrection;

Par votre Ascension;

Par vos joies;

Par votre gloire.

I do not speak of the litanies of the Virgin. What becomes in the French of our atennuators of this fine Latin so deeply Virgilian and by a miracle so deeply biblical. A whole study will have to be made of this. One would dedicate it to the pupils of the sixième class, my dear Lotte, and one could entitle it: a model of bad Latin translation, or how one makes a bad Latin translation. It is sad to think that one gives to French faithful a translation in which I see that Turris eburnea becomes Model of purity, — (one would not believe it, one really must see it), — and Domus aurea Sanctuary of charity. It is all the more unimaginable as these Litanies of the Virgin are precisely one of the texts, perhaps the text in which French most fully beats its full, most fully triumphs over Latin itself.

And what a singular election, in the verb and perhaps more, than that of Virgil. He believed he was serving his old Latin earth, the old Latin gods, and the fine Greek gods latinized. He was serving them indeed. He was serving the God who was coming. He was preparing for the God who was coming, for the Virgin who was coming, Deo nascenti Virginique matri (For the God being born and the Virgin mother) a certain Latin, almost a certain proper idiom. The great Italian Christendom had deeply felt and marked it. The great French Christendom had deeply felt and marked it. Hugo even, the young Hugo marked it deeply.

§ 310. — Il n’est si bonne compaignie (There is no company so good), said those old people, qui ne se quitte (that does not part). I unfortunately see that it is the hour we must leave the company of M. Laudet. He assures us that M. Le Grix will respond to us. If we draw as much profit from the company of M. Le Grix as we have drawn from that of M. Laudet, we must thank them both for it. He affirms it to us in one or two passages. “And that is why it is I who take up the pen, — (to copy Laudet, when one has just copied Joinville), — today, not to defend an article that I have approved without however having written or inspired a single treacherous word of it, but to point out the procedures and the scientific method of the Péguy school, while waiting for François Le Grix to respond on the fond of the question — (I assure you, monsieur Laudet, it would be better to write the bottom of the question. One does not write le fond de la question as one writes a fonds de commerce) — to Péguy in one of his chronicles.”

And beginning at the bottom of his 278: “it is my duty to consider and to signal as a forgery the use one makes of my name for an article that one knows I did not write, and the fraud is all the more grave that one makes M. Le Grix say in the article that one has interest to attribute to me things that he never said and against which moreover he himself will defend himself.”

I am more curious to see how M. Laudet, I mean how M. Le Grix will defend himself moreover and how the fraud is all the more grave that I have made him say things he never said. Unless I have fabricated myself all the citations of M. Le Grix that I put in the announcement, or unless to suppose that the administration of the Revue hebdomadaire had insidiously fabricated copies of number 24 specially for me, and slipped them surreptitiously precisely into the kiosks needed, all that I have been able to find of copies of this Review bearing number 24 and the date of June 17, 1911 bore simultaneously the article of M. Le Grix and in the article of M. Le Grix the citations I made of it. I do not well see how M. Le Grix can demonstrate that he did not write what he wrote.

Another defense by M. Le Grix would be better understood and it would be in a certain sense legitimate and we shall perhaps see it. It is quite possible that M. Le Grix did not understand what he was saying, at least all that he was saying, and that he did not see or measure how far he was saying. And that he did not see all there was in what he was saying. And that he would prefer not to have said it. But if he knows what he says, he has said what I said he had said. And if he does not know what he says, he is an imbecile and let him not meddle in making himself, in this tone, in a great review, he who has never produced anything, the censor of those who do produce.

He will defend himself, he will reply to me on the fond. Or on the fonds. He will unfortunately take a middle term. He will dress it up differently. He will deny the most evident citations. He will withdraw, he will take back his word. He will disavow what he said. M. Laudet already shows him the ways. Every time that in his response M. Laudet does not cite my text directly in smaller characters, every time that he gathers my “thought” to refute it, not only does he falsify it, that would be nothing, it is the habit in polemics, but then, and falsified, he puts it between quotation marks. It was already a sickness of M. Guy-Grand. When M. Guy-Grand played the Péguy, — much better than I do, naturally, — when he had strongly constituted my thought to dump it on the ground, or rather, for one must be just, to pass it through the sieve, — of scientific criticism, — he put it between quotation marks. It is a reigning sickness. If I ever take on M. Le Grix himself as one wishes me to take him on, one of my biggest arguments, one of my biggest grievances will be precisely that throughout his article not only did he say ill of me, which is permitted, but all the ill he said of me he said that it was I who had said it to him and he put it all between quotation marks. One ought really in schools to teach young people the use of quotation marks. Must it really be I, the small one, who am forced to teach so great a lord the use of quotation marks. And so great a servant (of arms).

This time it is M. Laudet who puts in quotation marks all that I did not say. One has only to go and see. He puts in quotation marks as being from me that I am a recent pontiff who “will henceforth oversee the faithful consciences.” Now I have said and I could say only precisely the contrary. The faithful consciences have no need that they be overseen. Above all the faithful consciences have no need that I oversee them. Where would my magisterium be. The faithful consciences are worth more than I am. I said on the contrary that I would oversee the attempts at embezzlement of the faithful consciences. To watch thieves, is the contrary of watching the robbed. The very praiseworthy and rather high desire to cover M. Le Grix has carried M. Laudet here a little far.

It was to carry him further still. M. Laudet refers his readers to M. Le Grix’s article. — “But it is aberration,” he writes, “to conclude from these attackable pages — I refer our readers — that Le Grix attacks the essential truths of our faith.” — M. Laudet counts much on the laziness of his readers. And he invites them all the more to go and see in that certainly he hopes they will not go there. For if they went his readers would see that M. Le Grix did say what I had said he said and not what M. Laudet says he said or did not say. This care to cover M. Le Grix sometimes carries M. Laudet a little far. M. Le Grix had written page 417, line 20, in the number 24 of June 17, 1911: “I imagined her more naïve. How, without that, could she have believed her voices?” Here is what this sentence of M. Le Grix became when reported by M. Laudet in the article, in the response of M. Laudet: “Yes, M. Le Grix, in the article of June 17, said that the Joan of Arc imagined by Péguy was too reasoning to be able to believe in Voices;” — There would be curious researches to be made and a history of the variations of the texts of M. Le Grix in the texts of M. Laudet. These variations would always take place in the same direction, which is the direction of attenuations. It would properly be a history of weakenings. If I too wanted to bring into play the big words, to invoke forgery and fraud, what would I not have to say here.

M. LE GRIX himself M. Le Grix in M. Laudet

(Revue hebdomadaire, number 24, of June 17, 1911, page 417, line 20)

“I imagined her more naïve. How, without that, could she have believed her voices?”

(Revue hebdomadaire, number 30, of August 12, 1911, page 279, line 7)

“Yes, M. Le Grix, in the article of June 17, said that the Joan of Arc imagined by Péguy was too reasoning to be able to believe in Voices;”

A censor would see here some alteration of a text. I will only say that this is a synoptic table and we will leave each other on this good word.

Péguy

I cannot however refrain from copying again this letter of old Joinville of which I spoke higher up. A friend of mine has copied it for us in the translation by Natalis de Wailly. There is everything in this letter:

To his good lord Louis, by the grace of God, king of France and of Navarre, John lord of Joinville, his seneschal of Champagne, greeting and his service quite at the ready.

Dear sire, it is well true, as you have ordered, that it was being said that you had made peace with the Flemish, and because, sire, we thought it was true, we had made no preparations to go at your summons. And as for the fact, sire, that you have ordered me that you will be at Arras to do yourself justice for the wrongs the Flemish do you, it seems to me, sire, that you do well; and may God be your aid!

These Flemish who keep stirring all the time at the beginning of this fourteenth century, it is already the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War, it is already what will make Joan of Arc come.

And as to the fact that you have ordered me that I and my men should be at Orchies in the middle of the month of June, sire, I make known to you that this cannot well be; for your letters came to me the second Sunday of June and eight days passed thus before the receipt of your letters. And as soon as I shall be able, my men shall be ready to go where it shall please you.

Sire, may it not displease you that, at the first word, I have called you only good lord; for I have not done otherwise with my lords the other kings who have been before you, whom God absolve! May Our Lord be your guard!

Given the second Sunday of June, on which your letter was brought to me, in the year one thousand three hundred fifteen.

It was forty-five years since Saint Louis had died.